Enslavement
by ATemporarilyLostPhyz
Summary: While the world squeals desperately in Lord Voldemort's grip, Harry, enslaved by the Malfoys, struggles to keep sight of the person whom he thought he was and stands to risk surrendering all his mind and body to his master. But who really wins?
1. Worldly Woes

**Disclaimer:** All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of J. K. Rowling. ATemporarilyLostPhyz is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

**PART I**

**Chapter 1**

**Worldly Woes**

Harry woke up to soft, discordant mumbling. He pushed himself off the warm floor and looked over his shoulder at his company, in the process eliciting cricks from his stiff bones and uncovering the pain in areas with the flushest contact with the unyielding floor.

Harry owned the side wall facing Hermione's and Ron was sitting against his own wall, which faced the hallway to which their cavern was adjoined. He was counting the individual freckles that dusted his pale, grimly skin with rapt concentration. Hermione was huddled in her corner murmuring broken passages which Harry had determined to originate from a textbook for her favourite subject Study of Ancient Runes. No book, however, was in sight.

Harry stretched and yawned and relaxed and ran his tongue across his teeth, which had not seen a brush for the better part of two months. He slid to his own corner, crossed his arms and legs and as always used the soft glow of golden torchlight as a soporific to attempt to seduce his waking somnolence from leaving if it could shorten his day even for just an hour. He partly closed his eyes, keeping the light in view, and stared at his knees and dreamt of shooting straight up into sky on his Firebolt, the ascent so epic it whistled, he could almost feel the vibration of his broom deepening as always happened when it was upright, could almost feel the air growing colder and thinner. The ground beneath him was shrinking and twisting away fast, but the sky always darkened incommensurately slow.

The behaviours of the three friends were no stranger than their surroundings of iron bars and hard, most stone floor.

Voldemort had assembled a massive army and crushed the Hogwarts defensive. It was his headquarters now. Harry, Ron and Hermione were stowed in the lowest array of dungeons beneath the castle, caged away like animals from the rest of their fellow captives.

Harry had seen each one of his other friends dragged out of neighbouring cells and claimed by either a Death Eater, a social climber or adolescents could have graduated from Hogwarts a year or two ago. And so easily his friends were condemned to a life of slavery: Neville, Dean, Seamus, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Parvati Patil, her twin sister Padma, Fred, George and more. They were systematically ripped away from family and friend and the iron bars onto which they feebly clung.

Ron had turned bestial when the dark-cloaked guards accompanying a buyer had come to collect both Fred and George – a mercy Harry had thought would have pacified Ron somewhat. But his friend had lost half a tooth trying to bring down the gate to reach his brothers and gained a twitch after enduring two unbroken minutes of the Cruciatus Curse. During the torture the guard had cast another spell on Ron, on whose body gashes cut themselves apparent. The sight of his electrified blood, which for an instant was an unnatural, orange-glowing pool – had not left Harry six weeks later.

Ron had healed more with time than the lay ministrations of Hermione, who had managed to seal the wounds with an unbelievable piece of wandless magic. Harry knew she was fond of floating fire balls. Apparently so fond that she could call them to her palms and burned Ron's wounds closed. Ron, before she had done so, had pointed out that all they needed do was apply pressure on the gashes. Hermione had countered that they were too large to leave to pressure alone. Hence Ron had spent the following weeks attached to the slightly cold iron bars to alleviate the pain from his mild burns.

"Do you have any fanning charms somewhere in those hands of yours for my burns?" Ron had grumbled.

That his brothers did not share his floor or were not anywhere in the castle led Ron to countless hours sitting on the floor and counting his freckles for hours upon hours to the point that he developed pressure sores and had to sit on his hips. He had now returned to the habit and must have grown used to the sting on his buttocks – it was certainly nothing to his burns.

Their single and only source of relief was that Voldemort had not cared for a personal visit to their stony abode and taken away any one of them. Their suspicion of the absence of Voldemort's interest in them was dissipated by the endless stretch of hours and their renewed thankfulness whenever a student was bought and taken upstairs. At first Harry had thought Voldemort would have done so or even killed his friends in front of him to crush his spirit. But that now seemed a comical anxiety.

Harry did not know why they were the last to remain in the dungeons; everyone else had been taken. Perhaps no one wanted them – they were the worst disgraced after all, for if Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix had been the face of the crushed opposition, Harry, Ron and Hermione were undoubtedly the nose.

He dreaded with all his being the day those iron bars would creak open and make way for the person who was going to take either of them away from the other. He knew without qualification his fear was shared, it was just never spoken of aloud, it was too fearsome to contemplate. He was vulnerable by his emotional attachment to Ron and Hermione, the Weasleys and a good number more. It would have been more bearable had he had few and little to love.

The shock of defeat and knowing that they lay at the mercy of Voldemort took a while to come to terms with for those who fought against him. Most of those who had not been killed were held captive in the castle's sprawling dungeons which no one knew existed. And that Harry knew winter had only just crept in made the humidity in the dungeons all the more unhelpfully repulsive. He was now on a mouth-shredding, iron filings diet of irony that induced unexpectable moments of hilarity and pain and sorrow. The one place where they all thought they were safest was the same place in which his fellow schoolmates and teachers were toyed with and sold off like livestock.

It took Harry a few seconds to realize the torchlight had flickered when a guard walked across the gate, stooped and pushed through a small gap at the base of the barrier three dirty bowls and three gold-wrapped slabs. The guard straightened, without the usual groan, and stalked out of sight with a slight loftiness to which his three charges were not used.

Breakfast was served.

Their meals were an alternation of murky oats and lumpy maize porridge, both complimented by a slab of hazelnut chocolate (when breakfast came on the first day of their capture, having worked off their righteous indignation and their whirring minds had relented on concocting impossible plots in which they were broken out of the dungeons, and they had unwrapped their slabs to find it was chocolate they had started off slowly but ended up heaving on the floor with tears running down their flushed faces, amused in and by their new abyss; it was quite priceless). They needed to keep their sugar up, of course. It was rather considerate. They crawled toward the bowls, grabbed them and the chocolates and returned to their spots. Ron always began with the chocolate.

He had correctly guessed the oats but the porridge was foreign on his tongue and had to consult his friends, for his eyesight lacked unfunnily without glasses, which lay broken in his pocket. Try though Hermione had, her wandless effort had been futile. Nonetheless the broken spectacles were something of a source of morose pride for Harry to still possess: apart from the clothes on their back they owned nothing. He was, in effect, in some strange way, less poor than his friends.

Before the oats and porridge they had been served a grey, runny mass, an excuse for gruel which turned out their stomachs. The regurgitated meal had nowhere else to go and the floor was already running with their excreta which had filled up and spilled over the pit in the corner between Harry's wall and the iron bars. The guard never cleaned the entire pit but left just enough urine and faeces to which they would add and fill up the pit in a matter of days. The dungeon floor was slightly uneven and their excretions ran across the cavern. Today it was clean only because the guard had "fucked the tightest pussy ever! On my mum's, I swear! Pretty, fresh and hairless. Found meself a new fetish, mate," which explained the spring in his step. The three Gryffindors ate ravenously in silence.

The guard came back a few minutes later to take the dishes away, but he did not close the gate this time. Instead someone else walked in.

* * *

Severus Snape had never seemed to be a man of much patience. More improbable still was that he harboured any vestiges of useless hope, be it that for a free world or the escape of one Albus Dumbledore.

A few seconds ago a pair of guards had charged into his office and declared the headmaster missing.

"He just wasn't there!" one of the guards had pant, panic wild in his eyes.

Snape for an instant seemed to be gripped by panic as well felt. He flew out of the office without a thought to spare to his brewing potion and descended to the dungeons. Being the right hand of Lord Voldemort came with a stable of commitments. It was simply a matter of making the choice with the marginally smaller consequence. He had decided that Dumbledore's alleged escape was more pressing than brewing a potion that could verify magical ancestry.

Snape's footsteps resounded fleetingly on the stone floor as he glided down the passage. The cage holding Dumbledore and some of his closest staff was distinctly distant from those of the students. He stopped sharply at the iron bars. Minerva McGonagall was perched rigidly on the floor like a propped-up doll with her hands cradled sombrely in her lap. Yet, despite her grime stains and the tattered condition of her robe, there was a proud tightness to her drawn face that would give one pause before they thought they were looking at a prisoner.

McGonagall's eyes flickered upon Snape's appearance and she stared at her former colleague with restrained repulsion.

"Minerva," said Snape, his eyes glittering darkly down at her.

"Severus," McGonagall said in her cool, clipped tone, her gaze just as sharp ever but ever so weary.

Snape glanced at either side of the passage. "Would you care to explain what happened?"

McGonagall's lips compressed into thin white strips of flesh before she spoke. "Dumbledore's familiar somehow managed to swoop into this chamber, and as soon as it landed on him he was gone."

Professor Sprout, Flitwick, Trelawney and Sinistra nodded mutely. One corner of Snape's mouth curled at Professor Trelawney; indeed her solemn demeanour and gesture of agreement afforded the Divinations teacher a modicum of sanity, something which had distinctly lacked in her suggestions in staff meetings. Inviting a capricious, full-fledged Centaur as a guest teacher for her classes had been one of the lesser stretches of her uneven imagination. This had been despite the fact that her opinions in matters discussed at such meetings had seldom been prompted – for good reason: not to endure misty proclamations of the influences of celestial bodies on the pragmatic undertakings of the faculty.

Snape asked McGonagall in a much lower voice, "Do you think he has gone to gather forces elsewhere?"

Snape would not have dared to ask this question if he had not absolute faith in his Occlumency skills to withstand Voldemort's probe.

McGonagall took a breath and released a deep sigh. "I'm tempted to believe so, yes, Severus. It is a possibility," she answered carefully and tiredly.

Snape nodded. He rolled his dark eyes around the dungeon before he took off in a flurry of black robes down the dingy corridor.

* * *

Draco Apparated in front of the gates of Hogwarts. He had nearly done the unthinkable at Manor Malfoy. His father had grown sick and there was no sign of recovery after weeks of plummeting health Draco suspected was brought on by the heavy demands of being the Dark Lord's second-in-command. Indeed he had been about to be promoted to Minister of Magic.

So his father had ordered his own son to kill him. A Malfoy succumbed to nothing, he had whispered proudly, not even illness. He lay in his death bed, looking deflated and desiccated, and lifted his chin, staring up at the piece of wood pointed at him. He did not spare a final glance at his wife sitting silently at the ornate couch a few metres away, staring into the breathtaking expense of the manor through the window.

Draco nodded at his father and willed away the tears that threatened to spill. He would not perpetrate the disgrace of crying in front of his father when he was moments from leaving this world. He would give his father his strength as a parting gift, the certainty that his only son was strong. He would look into those cold grey eyes that he had inherited and dutifully carry it out. A parting gift.

With a final, bracing swallow and another deep look into those proud silver pools, Draco uttered the last words he would ever say to his father.

"_Avada_ _Kedavra_."

Every stride of his through the oaken doors leading into the Entrance Hall was resolute and at full stretch. He passed through another pair of tall doors and crossed the length of the Great Hall. He tamed his surprise and schooled his features back in order when he discovered that there were, instead of four, only two tables pushed slightly closer to the centre of the Hall. On his right were his former Slytherin Housemates who were chatting amicably and enjoying their meal as though it were an ordinary day and there was not Draco's right another table upon which naked pairs and trios and some quartets of Gryffindors involved in some of the most perverted sexual acts Draco could imagine, while most of their equally naked fellow Gryffindors sat in the seats lining the table eating their breakfast – laughless, banterless and downcast.

Unable to turn away, Draco watched Dennis Creevey sodomize his older brother, who made sharp gasps which were muffled around Neville's penis and absorbed into the small, saliva-slicked tuft of hair at its base as Colin sucked it. 'How old are these kids?' Draco found himself asking in his shock. Beside them, Dean Thomas was thrusting steadily into Parvati Patil. Draco's stomach had suddenly turned cement. _At least they're keeping warm_, he thought with false bravado.

The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff Houses had evidently been dissolved. Only one House sufficed to meet the whims of Voldemort. Draco strongly suspected the scarf-clad Pansy Parkinson, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Blaise Zabini – his circle of friends – Theodore Nott, other Slytherins and some students from other Houses had defected for their own safety shortly before the Dark Lord's takeover. They sat together, conversation strained in some spheres along the table. For some of them their newfound loyalty to the Dark Lord had guarded them against death or being sold off to sick men for reasons that Draco need not imagine. Soon, he knew, some of them would be inducted as Death Brothers, a high honour indeed.

Draco reached the High Table and bowed before Voldemort. "My Lord," he proclaimed as he tried to put what he had just witnessed out of mind.

Voldemort gave Draco a dazzling smile in reply. "Young Malfoy, how good of you to join us."

Only in his most unguarded moments would Draco ever admit the Dark Lord was striking. He had only recently enjoyed the company of his master which he had earned after receiving communications from him by a proxy who no longer existed, so he could not determine when the Dark Lord had gradually morphed from that pale, flat face with red gleaming eyes to this gorgeous, timeless, young man in front of him with deceivingly soft hazel eyes; fresh, pale skin; wavy, dark hair, hollow cheeks, and a handsome, cutting jawline.

"Of course, My Lord," Draco said, lengthening his smirk.

"How's your father?" enquired Voldemort, his voice mellowing lightly and with a slight frown creasing his forehead. But the hazel eyes remained ever beautiful and ever depthless.

Draco swallowed hard. "He's passed away, My Lord. He chose for me to take his life rather than his illness to take his last breath," he answered before his eyes strayed to glass the filled dark-red liquid underneath Voldemort's gaze. It was the finest red wine from one of his family's vineyards attached to the handful of villas they owned sprinkled across Europe. The Dark Lord had secured the loyalty of one of the oldest and most influential pureblood families that the magical world has ever known. And now he was the chief commander in a new chapter in Wizarding history. The Malfoys could not afford not to be part of it.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow and seemed impressed for a moment. But after his eyes glazed over briefly there grew a knowing, touched expression on his face. "Draco, you mustn't feel compelled to pretend. You're not ready and I understand. Your father was a fine man, Draco, and he achieved a stupendous amount in you. I couldn't have asked for a better soldier." He bestowed upon Draco a small, proud smile.

Draco, too, had a slightly away look in his eyes for a spell; he could barely see anything in front of him but the pulsing white and purple spots which had suddenly populated his vision. The Dark Lord knew. He always knew. Draco forced a nod. "Thank you, My Lord."

"I reckon I shouldn't keep you from your errand. I trust you're here to pick up something? Or rather, a few things?"

"Yes, My Lord. I believe they were reserved for me. I can't say I won't enjoy this little arrangement."

Voldemort chuckled lightly and wore a sympathetic, pitying expression. But he obligingly wagged a long finger and chided, "Now, now, Draco, don't get overexcited. Of course I do expect that I will be granted access to one of those things from time to time, correct?"

Draco was not fooled. It was neither a question nor a request but simply a kind reminder.

"Of course, My Lord," he said with a carefully bemused smile and making sure to affect a tone of affront. He bowed before he turned on his heel and headed for the bowels of the castle. He strode past the dank, empty cells accompanied by a haggard, spent-looking guard before arriving at an occupied one. Its guard nodded at the two of them and opened the gate for Draco. The guard collected the empty bowls and slunk out of sight while his colleague kept watch of the proceedings in the cell.

Draco could not help but avoid the grime-smeared faces of his former schoolmates. He drew his wand and anticipated the sudden, instinctive jerk in Potter's body, feeling unholy and poisoned by the sudden pouring of admiration. Potter had always bested him in their encounters and had always been someone Draco infuriatingly had never felt to fully master. He hated not getting his way. The Weasley was a simpleton plebeian not worth his consideration and the Mudblood by definition was not worth his consideration.

Draco's nostrils flared upon sighting the toilet. He looked away and Transfigured a very spartan metal chair. He was rather pleased with it; Transfiguration was the one subject for which he averaged less than ninety percent, only because Professor McGonagall had been distracted rewarding the Mudblood House points for apparent precociousness and calling Weasley and Potter into order and not seen his more than competent work.

After dusting imaginary dirt off his pristine and plainly expensive robes, Draco perched himself on the chair, crossed his arms and legs and began speaking at once, still avoiding their persons.

"You will become my slaves and accompany me to my home."

The announcement was flat, bored, unpitying and uncondescending. It was stated as though it were after the fact. It was to inform, not negotiate. Of course Draco had revealed that it was largely his mother's doing that he was here claiming his new slaves. He was ambivalent about keeping slaves at all, let alone his mother's choice of these specific set of slaves.

It must be beyond mortifying to be owned by one's former school nemesis, Draco thought. The three Gryffindors seemed neither shocked nor righteously indignant at his statements – nor did he expected them to be. This dour place, seeing their bodily products in plain sight and feeling their warm odour wafting off them must have absented their pride a while ago. It was no surprise the trio had barely reacted to his words at all. However, if he was surprised at their quiet acceptance of their new fate, he did not show it but went on speaking.

"I needn't point out that this is the best you could have hoped for. Am I correct?"

Did he actually expect an answer? Did his new charges feel obliged to respond? But of course he was right. The Gryffindor trio only had each other now, and the possibility of being separated must be intolerable. Rather they faced the ignominy of being enslaved him together than owned by some aspirant bourgeoisie who thought their small fortunes could buy them a good place in the Dark Lord's consideration, or worse: a Death Eater.

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked down at the floor. They could not bring themselves to concede. Harry could not even bare to look at his old schoolmate in the eye in all his scarf- and polo-neck-clad repulsiveness. It was humiliating. He should have seen this day coming. The Dark forces had won and undoubtedly so had the House of Malfoy. But Harry should have got used to this idea a long time ago. What was more humiliating than being stripped naked and Cruciated in front of hundreds of laughing and jeering faces in the Great Hall?

Malfoy appeared to take the silence as assent. But then suddenly a dark emotion reared him slightly in his chair and he narrowed his eyes on the raven-haired boy.

"I warned you, Potter, didn't I?" Malfoy hissed.

Harry looked up, surprised, and blinked at the stately prince in front of him.

"Remember? First year, on the train? I warned you this would happen, but then you..." Malfoy took a deep, slow breath. Harry imagined Malfoy was remonstrating himself severely for betraying emotion. He stood up from his chair. "Shall we?" he said as he gestured at the gate, his voice freshly detached.

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked up again at Malfoy. This was actually happening – they were going home with Draco Malfoy as their new master. A boy their own age owning them. It only took the ponytail tied by a black silk ribbon to remind Harry how close Malfoy approximated Lucius. The both of them, he thought, were vain and prissy. He, Ron and Hermione exchanged brief glances before they stood up wearily. The action flooded feeling into places they had forgotten they had: bones cracked and muscles whined and twitched. Harry snarled when a spasm pulled the instep of his right foot, and the small of his back screamed upon the return of weight it was now forced to bear without warning. For so long they had not stood on their feet.

They followed Malfoy outside the cell. The guard grunted at Malfoy and sneered at the sight of the other three. He slammed the gate shut, pulled out his wand and ordered the three slaves to hold out their wrists. Harry, Ron and Hermione, all of whom were overwhelmed with the exhilaration of stepping onto what felt like new ground even though it was mere centimetres away from the cell, felt a thin, cold, invisible binding force tie their wrists and ankles when the guard pointed his wand at them consecutively. He then motioned for them to move and escorted Malfoy to the end of the passage.

Harry's pulse quickened at the prospect of seeing and feeling atmosphere again on his parched skin. It had been two months since he had been outside and now he could not wait to finally enjoy that simple pleasure again. Never again will he take for granted that small, seemingly inconsequential liberty.

The haggard-looking guard at the end of the passage reached with a large, woody hand in his cloak and pulled out three wands. He gave the three Gryffindors leering once-overs as he handed the wands to Malfoy, his face indulgent. Malfoy tapped each wand with his wand as he muttered a spell, and the three wands disappeared out of sight. The guard seem to share the trio's astonishment but Malfoy explained nothing, dismissed his incredulity and strode around him. He did not look back to check if the three teenagers would follow him. Harry, Ron and Hermione, having not understood what had just happened, proceeded behind him.

When Harry noticed Hermione fold her arms he realized the floor was growing appreciably colder as they left the dungeons, which were warm and slightly moist.

There was an eerie absence of clamour as they approached the Great Hall, and Harry felt a distant sense of alarm. What happened to those happy, cheerful, care-free laughs and chatter? He never thought he would ever miss the sound of giggling Hufflepuffs. He caught Ron and Hermione craning their necks to snatch a glimpse of the inside of the Great Hall. Knowing that it would be futile if he tried to do so left him with a searing pang in his chest. In their first excursion outside the dark cells, everything Harry saw and felt was unsurprisingly vague, noisy and unclear. He now did not react with overt wide-eyed incredulity at whatever that warranted it when it came his way – the innocence borne of that capacity left the same day the cheer left Hogwarts. Those reactions were too expensive to conjure. But the scene they had just witnessed, in a place where all positivity and happiness was most concentrated in all the world, painted for Harry the most vivid picture of a world in shadow.

The doors of the Entrance Hall slowly opened. In looming daylight the three prisoners appeared shrunk and dull. Stepping outside into the cool, wintry breeze, a part of Harry feared his brain would not be able to process fast enough to experience it fully. After weeks of sitting in a dark, dank cell, the tired and frosted surroundings were bursting with pure colour in his eyes. His vision also seemed to ripen in defiance of its lacking state and unworn spectacles. The pictures of the washed-out Scottish highlands rolling underneath Hogwarts, the grave, sparsely flush trees and the grey, monolithic castle walls plied themselves on his eyeballs. And the new, delightfully crisp, clean smells stuffed themselves up his nostrils – so different to the heavy, stuffy ones of body heat, sweat and the trapped warmth of the underground he used to breathe. He opened his hands to feel the cool air run between his fingers. And his brain was active and working, not sitting stagnantly inside his cranium atrophying with every recount of freckles and recital of textbook passages and replay of a fading film of flying.

Harry turned to Ron and Hermione, wondering how they were taking all this in. After what felt like an age, he saw something different in their faces: the hesitation to smile.

"Don't worry about your wands," Malfoy drawled as soon as they were outside out of the castle and heading for the gate, "they're hidden away safely at the manor; I could not help contemplate the possibility of the three of you subduing me and reclaiming them, an incredibly impossible scenario though it may be."

Harry's eyes fell upon Hagrid's cottage, above whose chimney no smoke bellowed to stave off the chill: his giant friend was not there. Was he hiding, or was he already slain? Harry added these questions into the mental reservoir of considerations isolated from his active attention, to where all those other many depressing thoughts tended to be drained by the sheer forces of time and lethargy.

Harry wondered where the rain was; it should be pouring.

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	2. Malfoy Manor

**Chapter 2**

**Malfoy Manor**

Black, wrought iron gates greeted them at the mouth of the estate, and a smooth stoned pathway, split by a playing fountain before rejoining, led them towards the majestic manor flanked by a hedge of delicate lilies and narcissuses and other flowers. Kempt grass flooded either sides of the pathway and broke at the narrow empty strip of ground immediately before the mansion itself. The edifice looming towards them was so vast it Harry could neither fit it within his field of vision nor see beyond either side of it. It was an expanse of orange-brown stone broken by the tall, mullioned windows and capped by grey rooftops and spires.

Malfoy led through the wide doorway and then a pair of thick oaken doors which had swept open. Harry was glad the cool air was sealed outside when the doors shut and a delectable, thin patina of warmth encased him indoors. If he thought the outside, with its folding facades and stately spires was stunning, he did not know what to think about the inside. He turned to his friends and noticed a small gleam of amazement in their eyes. The three of them glanced at each other but their expressions betrayed very little – all too hesitate to experience, even to communicate. Dark wood panels sprawled across the foyer. On their left was a compartment slightly larger than a changing room which baffled Harry and thought it looked ugly and out of place so near the entrance. They proceeded deeper inside, now treading on carpeted floor, and turned a corner ahead of a white grand staircase leading to the higher parts of the mansion.

Malfoy lead them down a long corridor lined with portraits of stately looking men and having in common the patented Malfoy platinum-blond hair, intense eyes and smirk. Some stared more balefully at them than others as they strode past. Not surprisingly the facial expressions of the portraits contracted more severely when the eyes of the previous Malfoys landed on Hermione. Given that she looked as sullied as the boys, Harry suspected the portraits were itching to scream murder and Mudblood. But showing the burning vigour that still survived in her, notwithstanding the toying torturing sessions under the wands of the Slytherins, the grime and the smell of their faeces on their skins, Hermione held her head up high and swaggered down the door-dotted hallway in all her dirty, Mudblood glory.

The Slytherin finally halted, opened a door upon which the Malfoy crest was curved and stared at Harry, Ron and Hermione, who entered warily. They shuffled uncertainly in the middle of room, which looked so full and heavy and brown and warm it was irresistibly inviting in the burgeoning winter. An enormous four-poster bed dominated the carpeted room and above which hung a framed picture of a landscape. A glossy escritoire and its chair faced a curtained window which curved out of the plane of its wall to the outside and a tall bookcase stood beside the escritoire. Opposite the window was an elegant, dark wood dressing table with a tucked-in stool. And against the wall facing the bed stood an elaborately carved armoire and a lit fireplace around which hung a single sofa and coffee table. Just before the corner at the head of the bed was a door which likely led to the bathroom. Harry also noticed a clock hanging over the mantle of the fireplace set in a flat, equally elaborate wood carving reading a few minutes to one o'clock.

Meanwhile Malfoy had moved into the seat before the fireplace and crossed his legs, quietly studying the three other occupants. He frowned slightly at their dirty feet plunged into the fabric of the soft cream-brown carpet but said nothing. Ron, Harry and Hermione stood in front of him secretly seething at this display of superiority; it was only natural Malfoy would take his time to address them, forcing them ask themselves unnerving questions. Harry's surge of annoyance at Malfoy's arrogance reminded him painfully of the normal ways things used to be before things went horribly awry. Harry, who knew his friends were doing the same, fought his eyes against finding his feet and eyed Malfoy squarely. Then the aristocrat spoke from his seat.

"House rules," Malfoy declared curtly. "Your rooms are along this corridor. You can choose among-" Malfoy broke in speech as his eyes widened and nostrils flared. His eyes whizzed back and forth; he was clearly thinking rapidly. Harry suspected Malfoy had just realized he could not so cavalierly give his three new slaves such liberty as choice and that he had to personally assign them their rooms in order to remind them of and let them get used to the idea of his young authority upon them.

"This will be Potter's room," Malfoy amended firmly. Yet the authority in his voice still suffered growing pains and its ring was not yet crisp. "Opposite it," he went on as he pointed through them, "will be Weasley's room. And next to that will be... Granger's room."

Apart from Malfoy' astonishing use of Hermione's proper name as opposed to an obscenity, Harry, Ron and Hermione also noted the slight but significant changes that had occurred in the Slytherin: he sat with a new weight in the sofa even though he did not fill it, a forward edge and angle to his body that Harry would not associate with Malfoy but rather to his father. For if Harry were to be honest, he would admit Lucius had a commanding presence, a gravitas borne not only of his noble bearing but also of his sparse, light movements, his economy of noise and expression and the preoccupations he activated in one of the unpredictable workings of his mind. Harry now thought he could see a glimpse of him in Malfoy. Was in front of him genuine maturity or simply the pretensions of an ambitious child?

"You will be served by a house-elf named Tibby," Malfoy continued. "She will guide you during your indefinite stay here until such a time you're familiar with the manor and the routine." After pausing only briefly to make sure his three charges understood what he had said, he went on, "You're to be up by nine o'clock every day for breakfast in the dining room. Lunch is at two o'clock and dinner at seven."

Malfoy evidently could not help a small smirk at the slightly resentful and incredulous looks on the three Gryffindors' faces as they began to realize how structured their days would be at the manor.

Malfoy exhaled importantly again. "You're also to be collared."

There was instant reaction: Harry, Ron and Hermione's tautened and tense lines wrung their faces in anxiety, but they said nothing.

"This is to smother your magic," explained Malfoy, and Harry's eyes flashed, "and, of course, to show that you're Malfoy property. Oh and to show that you're slaves as well." Malfoy had threatened to explode into laughter when his charges winced and glared at him. "Now this here is important," he went on more soberly as his features suddenly turned cold. In spite of themselves, Harry, Ron and Hermione listened closely. "You will find shortly that slaves aren't granted such... luxuries as you three will enjoy. But when we have guests, I expect you to behave like any other properly trained slave in any other household. In that event, you're to kneel beside each other in a row with hands in your laps and heads bowed. And do not move even if you're spoken to."

There was no denying Malfoy was serious on this point. His stern expression told them he was interested neither in their reactions nor any indication of their compliance – he simply expected it of them. Harry did not fully believe his ears but thought there was some truth to what Malfoy said. The tales Neville and the others had brought back when they visited Hogwarts had sketched out the kind of conditions his friends had to endure in their enslavement. Given that Malfoy had deigned to speak to them calmly and had not reached for his wand from the time he collected them at Hogwarts, all indications were that almost anything they would experience at the mansion would be far better than what their friends did elsewhere. Harry felt like a fraud for being grateful and not being able to help himself inwardly rejoicing in his and his two friends' fortunes.

"Unlike other slave masters, I have no interests of any nature in the three of you, so you don't have to worry about me hunting you down and demanding those kinds of services from you." Malfoy gave them a grimaced once-over. "So it would work in everyone's best interest not to cross each other's paths: that means I don't disturb you and you don't disturb me. And most of the time we'll be in separate parts of the manor.

"But know this: I have no control if we have guests. If they request any favours from any of you… or all of you... be it you serving them or me sexually-" Another grimace twisted Malfoy's frosty features but he forced himself to continue. "-then you or I don't have any choice and you will have to comply and be _convincing_. That might mean you might have to practice that amongst yourselves…"

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked down at their laps and blushed to the tips of their hair. Indignation was a distant pulse at the back of Harry's mind for all he had heard about sexual favours. They had vaguely accepted its inexorability.

"Lastly," Malfoy was saying, "you're to ignore my mother. Don't interact with her at all." Malfoy glared intently at them before he continued. "All in all, don't draw attention to yourselves. Don't do anything stupid. Just... exist."

Just exist. They were condemned to living for the sake of living. They longer hand careers towards which to work in order to become independent and take care of themselves. In what kind of world? Their only function was to facilitate the comfortable living of their masters. Malfoy was only fifteen years old; how long would he live for? Perhaps he would grow tired of them or would not need them any longer and freed them. Perhaps Dumbledore would somehow break out from his cell, overpower the guard and work his way around the castle until he killed Voldemort and disintegrated his regime. Perhaps he and his friends could escape Malfoy Manor to the Muggle world or another Wizarding country.

Malfoy rose to his feet, dusted himself off and swept out of the room, leaving behind a screaming silence.

Harry, Ron and Hermione finally took a good look at each other. Ron's grown-out hair was flattened to his scalp at the back where he rested his head like a piece of cardboard. His gangly length was accentuated by his slimmer build due to their inadequate diet in the cells, making him more than head taller than Harry. Even Hermione's hair, which was at its frizziest Harry had ever seen it, gave her a few centimetres over Harry. It looked irreparably tangled. Measly and scrawny even before captivity, Harry looked even more pitiable than before: thinner and seemingly shorter with hallowed cheeks and a sickly pallor relieved only by the beautiful green eyes that still fiercely burned.

Their clothes were tattered, sticky and sordid. They had no shoes, which for Harry was an enigmatically distinct kind of loss. The significance must lie between the fact that without them one touches the ground and nothing on earth is lower or dirtier than that, and the fact that by losing them he lost some security, it crossed a line, and even smelling terribly did not feel more profound and severe an indignity.

They had grime streaks all over their faces, arms and legs, their fingernails were long and black, and they reeked something foul. But they did not pay attention to anything other than their faces, where all the truths were playing. Being here now, far removed from the situation back at Hogwarts, made the moment feel like a rebirth. Before Ron and Harry could prepare themselves, Hermione flung her arms around them and suffocated them. The boys hugged her back fiercely. Hermione unloaded bucket-loads of tears on them while they sobbed silently. They soon separated; their mingled stenches were overbearing. Hermione pulled out with her face shining with tears, ravines cutting through the grime and leaving peach streaks. The boys quickly dried their eyes.

The air that enveloped them now felt freer. They were free of the strange bonds that held them emotionally apart. It was so easy to stray alone into any direction back in the small dungeon, so easy to ignore everyone and wander off into one's own world in one's head. It felt like a reunion, a renewing of their friendship and a strengthening of it.

Having had enough of their feelings, they radiated away from each other: Ron explored the drawers of the dresser, Hermione examined the spines of the titles on the bookshelf with a disapproving shake of her head, and Harry walked around the escritoire and stared out the window. He looked across the vast forecourt but could barely make out the perimeter of the gorgeous estate. A soft breeze swayed the flowers lining the pathway. His mind was surprisingly blank. He turned around and went over to sit on the edge of the bed, folding his arms and staring at his dirty feet. This was his room, but its stark homeliness actually did more to make it feel foreign to Harry.

His movement seemed to have urged Ron and Hermione to conform: Ron dropped himself onto the wide cushioned stool of the dresser and Hermione closed the book she had been skimming over, pulled out the seat of the escritoire and seated herself.

When last had they spoken? Back in the dungeons they had felt no compulsion to talk: they occupied the same ten-by-ten room with nothing else to do for two months. Their removal from it into their new home had forced a mental departure from a surreal absence of temporal obligations to a place where they were now frighteningly flush with reality.

Just when the tension grew very uncomfortable and Harry was about to open his mouth there was a sudden noise.

_POP!_

"Tibby is to be serving-"

The creature had stopped mid-sentenced and its eyes had bulged impossibly.

The three Gryffindors, so startled that they had thrown their arms and feet up, looked on at the impeccably kept house-elf – as impeccable as a house-elf could get – through their cage of protective limbs. The elf had eyes only for Harry, who along with Ron and Hermione unravelled their arms and feet and flushed after such an overreaction.

The house-elf was still starry-eyed. Then, finally, it said, rather dazedly and reverently, "Tibby is to be serving the three slaves by order of Lady Narcissa."

Hermione's brow creased at the word "serve." Harry was not surprised to see that her S.P.E.W. passion had evidently not left her system. This glimpse of the characters they were before captivity, that they were same people inside, encouraged Harry. Hermione did look rather impressed by how neat the elf looked, however.

Harry cleared his throat. "Hi, Tibby."

The elf stared at him pointedly. "Harry Potter is," the elf stammered, struggling to find words.

"Tibby," said Harry, "this is Ron and this is Hermione."

Tibby shook her head. "Tibby is to see to it the three elves are clean and fed," she said firmly as they met her serious expression for the first time.

Hermione's face shone. "Yes, Merlin, we need a bath!"

Ron was the only one left who had not spoken. But instead his stomach growled at the mention of food.

The house-elf, wearing a teacloth emblazoned with a large green Malfoy, nodded. "Yes, the three slaves need to bathe." Harry was beginning to get annoyed being referred to as a slave so often. "Would Slave Ron Weasley and Slave Hermione Granger go to their rooms now? S—slave Harry Potter can take his bath in there." The elf feebly pointed at the door Harry had spotted earlier.

Harry was not nearly as confused as his friends were by Tibby's shock at seeing Harry Potter in Malfoy Manor. His strong suspicion was that Dobby, after meeting him for the first time at the Durselys, had mentioned him to the other Malfoy house-elves about how he was not cruel like their owner. Knowing Dobby, Harry was almost certain the free elf had effused about him and made him into a legend.

"Thank you, Tibby," Hermione said, giving Tibby a grateful smile. The elf's eyes shifted to her and then returned to Harry.

_POP!_

Harry, Ron and Hermione blinked at the space previously occupied by the elf. Some of the previous tension returned.

"We should… start getting to our baths," Ron suggested in his first words uttered since leaving Hogwarts.

The novelty of the ring of this new voice lent Ron's words a robust authority; Harry and Hermione did not attempt a conversation between the three of them and instead the redhead and Hermione stood up. They all looked into each other's eyes and smiled. Ron and Hermione left the room, leaving Harry alone in unfamiliar territory. He was unsettled but at least he was certain of something: he had an order, which was to get clean.

The clock on top of the fireplace read 13:05 – lunch was in about an hour. He headed to the bathroom. When he entered it and discovered that a truer description of it was a mini-spa, he had a vivid mental image of a larger-than-life tabloid columnist with an annoying coif and shades luxuriating in a bubble bath while he invented stories about Wizarding celebrities' latest exploits. Malfoy replaced the journalist in the bathtub, and Harry hoped his new owner was more aggressively heterosexual than his silver ring, necklace and polo neck suggested.

* * *

Harry climbed out of the bathtub while wiping off and then inspected himself. He had done a pretty good job. He brushed his teeth and dealt with his ghastly long, black nails with a nail clipper he found in the shelf behind the mirror above the basin to complete his makeover. Long nails combined with a pseudo-tan and overgrown, spiky hair would have had sent Uncle Vernon raging into the garage and brought him back with a leaf rake with which to pound Harry.

He emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist and glanced at the clock above the fireplace: 14:49. It had taken almost an hour to clean himself thoroughly enough and had to refill his bathtub six times. At one point he nearly lost himself in his self-pity as he stared at the thick, floating, bubbling muck. And he had to bathe with the door open as his stench grew stronger with every stroke the loofah made across his skin. He had shaved off his pubic hair, the little curls of which had now become tight balls too painful to either scrub hard to disturb the clay-like layer of sweat and dirt beneath or comb it straight. And even his complexion changed: as the dirt lifted it revealed his sun-starved pallor.

Harry thought he could be forgiven for his presumptuousness when he went over to the ostentatious armoire and opened it, only to find a cool draught in its empty compartment. He turned and swept his gaze around the room, hoping for clothes to magically appear. When this did not materialize he crossed the floor to his door and peeked out of his room down the long hallway, fortuitously find the heads of his friends stuck out as well. He was quite certain they all had found themselves in the same puddle of confusion: they had nothing else to wear except their soiled clothes. They shrugged at each other, nonplussed. And at that point, knowing they were threatening to be late for lunch, it suddenly dawned on Harry that he would have to step out of his room in his towel. That surely could not be…

"Is your wardrobe empty like mine?" Harry asked them, at which Ron and Hermione nodded.

"What do we do?" whispered Hermione shrilly, clearly panicking.

"Lunch's in five minutes," Ron pointed out unhelpfully. Then he asked quite unabashedly, "Did you guys have bugs in your bathwater, by the way?"

Harry and Hermione stared at him for a full five seconds before they slowed shook their heads. Harry wondered how many more washes his friend had needed.

"My hair is totally ruined," moaned Hermione, plucking it hopelessly. "I might just as well rip it all off right now. It's tangled impossibly!"

"I think we all could do with a haircut," said Ron, feeling the back of his head and trying to pull apart the tight coils, wincing. "But I can get used taking my-"

"Glad you're finally all cleaned up. I could've sworn you were the sons and daughter of vagrants," said a voice down the middle off the hallway.

The trio had not seen Malfoy stride into view and fold his arms. He had made a change of wardrobe, discarding his blue overcoat for a black V-neck shirt and grey slacks. Either his mother styled him or he had a penchant for dressing like a ponce, Harry thought haplessly. And he had never heard of anyone changing for so banal an occasion as lunch. Perhaps Malfoy wanted to get rid of everything that lingered from his visit to Hogwarts.

"You should be in the dining room in about five minutes," ordered Malfoy as he spun on his heel and faced his mother, who had just appeared behind him.

"I don't think it would be appropriate to have unclothed guests at the dinner table, my boy," Narcissa chided in a low, sweet voice. Judging from how suddenly Malfoy's shoulder became rigid, Harry surmised he was blushing at the affectionate term and at being corrected in front of his charges. "They may be slaves, but they're still human. Why don't you have Tibby robe them at the least?"

"Yes, Mother," mumbled Malfoy. He was turned away from the other three but Harry was certain he had flushed; he thought Malfoy was quite right to feel embarrassed. Malfoy waited until his mother was out of sight before summoning Tibby and ordering her accordingly. He then took off at once in a swift and stiff gait.

"But where's the dining room?" Harry hollered at him. Malfoy only hastened down the hallway and took a sharp left.

"Tibby will now be showing you where the dining room is, Slave Harry Potter," Tibby declared after she appeared from thin air. There was something unnerving about hearing a voice before seeing its bodily source, but this time Harry, Ron and Hermione mastered themselves. Tibby snapped her fingers and they were suddenly wearing robes.

Astonished, they stepped fully out of their rooms and inspected their new gear. Harry donned a dark-blue silk robe that felt heavenly on his skin, which he had scrubbed almost raw for the better part of an hour. Ron wore a byzantium robe that stretched his tall figure and accentuated his slimness. And Hermione had on a deep emerald number that made her sharp hipbones stick out unflatteringly. But Ron apparently found no flaw in her as he devoured her a few metres away. He dragged his bottom lip on the floor as Tibby led them down the corridor.

"Why, oh why didn't she give us underwear?" groaned Ron. Harry noticed him trying to push down his growing erection behind Hermione.

The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, a feeling helped by Harry's observation of Tibby's stubby little legs peddling double time to match a distance one stride of his own legs covered. A few corners and more opulent corridors later they arrived in a large room with a long table running across the middle of it. Harry lost count of the chairs tucked into it as Tibby led them in. There was a square tiered chandelier hanging above the table, on top of which rested several brass candelabra. Malfoy and his mother sat at the opposite end of the table.

Harry could not tell Malfoy was pouting and only Ron and Hermione noticed that their owner had lost all the regal air he had had about him back in Harry's room. Eclipsing it was also the radiant elegance of his mother, who was staring pensively out of a window with her head tilted backwards slightly, exposing a stretch of delicate, pale neck adorned with a simple pearl necklace. As soon as they heard the sound of Tibby's pattering feet and the cracking bones of Harry's feet (which was always a sign of a bad summer when he was fed exceptionally little and grew so thin that the first few steps he took out of bed in the morning made the bones in his feet crack) they looked up and stared carefully and stoically at them.

"We're glad you could join us," said Narcissa, clearly speaking for herself as Malfoy quirked his eyebrow in sarcastic sincerity. "Please, take your seats." She waved at their seats while her son's nostrils flared slightly when they sat down at the table as though they were soiling the chairs. The table was suddenly laden with five plates of food.

Harry's nose twitched at the smell of normal food. When last had he smelled something so otherworldly? For several moments he just stared at his full plate of two toasted sandwiches packed with diced sausage bits smothered in a creamy mayo sauce.

"Please don't feign modesty," begged Narcissa kindly. "After your lengthy stint at Hogwarts you should be dying to eat real food. Don't mind us prissy eaters. The only reason we persist as we do is in memory of Lucius."

Her son's fork hung in his mouth as he stared incredulously at her as though she had just slurred his father's name.

Harry, Ron and Hermione needed no further motivation, nor did they need the utensils lying next to their plates. Before either they or mother and son knew it, their cheeks were bulging and their lips drooling thick white sauce at the corners. Tibby appeared at the other end and magicked two goblets on the table for Malfoy and his mother before quickly dawdling over to them.

"Pumpkin juice, cider, mead, white wine or red wine, Slave Harry Potter?" asked Tibby.

Malfoy choked on whatever he was drinking in his silver goblet. "Did he just offer wine to the slaves, Mother?" he whispered in outrage not too softly. Narcissa merely smiled. He frowned from the other end of the room as though waiting on Harry's choice to see if he would have the gall to request wine. Meanwhile Tibby, after hearing the implication beneath her master's words, was whipping her head back and forth between Malfoy and Harry and breaking into a terrible sweat, undoubtedly flustered by her mistake of assuming it was appropriate to offer slaves wine.

"Pumpkin juice, thanks," Harry replied in rescue of the elf. Tibby clicked her fingers. After all, Harry did not have any experience with wine and sipped the goblet which had just appeared. Tibby took Ron's and Hermione's orders as well before disappearing as though her departure could not have come sooner.

"Too bad we don't have any ale or Butterbeer," harrumphed Malfoy. He was apparently under the impression he was entertaining his mother. However, she said nothing back but angled her head slightly as she chewed and cut her chicken fillet and dabbed it in tartare sauce.

As soon as the bolus of food in Harry's mouth hit his stomach he nearly fainted with the relief and the pain. He swayed in his seat and balanced himself with his elbow on the table, a move unmissed by Malfoy. Harry bowed against the table and chewed slowly as his stomach tried to adjust to the new sensation of having food in its cavity. It felt like someone was stabbing him from the inside, and with every stab his stomach would squeeze into a ball and roll on itself. It should not have been surprising given that they had survived on runny gruel for a spell. But he simply had to force himself to eat; the next meal was a quarter of a day away. Harry looked up and noticed that Ron and Hermione, too, had pulled back from the ravenous pace with which they had begun.

Harry was in half a mind to ask if he could take his plate to his room so or save it for later. He almost burst out laughing with the thought but the effort it took to prevent this was enough to cause his abdominal muscles to contract and disturb his stomach, which rolled and turned again in agony. Harry shut his eyes and swallowed his moan of pain. He gathered his strength, sat up and paced himself.

Lunch progressed peacefully with the clink of goblet on wood and fork on plate. After Malfoy and his mother finished eating – which was a considerable time before they did – the pair remained seated quietly, waiting just as they had when Harry, Ron and Hermione had walked into the room. In fact, words were spoken only after Tibby had returned to remove the cutlery before departing hurriedly again.

"You're dismissed," Malfoy called down the table shortly, the bite in his words suggesting his satisfaction in dismissing them summarily. Without a moment to waste, but also slightly regretfully, the trio came to their bare feet and made for the exit.

"One more thing," said Narcissa, halting them in their tracks. She tinkered with her pearl necklace. "Your collars arrive tomorrow morning."

A pulse of ice ran up Harry's body, stopping at his neck, where he felt his throat constrict as though Malfoy's mother had breathed into reality the imminent collar around it. Struggling to swallow, Harry found the friendly reminder more devastating as it came from Malfoy's mother. He watched a fastidious, pale hand lift a serviette to a pair of happily smiling lips and pat them, and Malfoy gave a sigh of sweet delight. It had been a wonderful meal.

"Will you require us again for the rest of the day?" Harry asked with his back to the couple.

"No," replied Narcissa.

The three made their way to Harry's room.


	3. Capturing the Capture

**Chapter 4**

**Capturing the Capture**

"I almost thought she was nice for a moment!" huffed Hermione angrily.

"And she could've at least looked us in the face when she said it," Ron added, incensed.

They were sitting on Harry's four-poster bed. The lunch they had eaten less than half an hour ago was already missed. Harry was busy fingering his broken glasses while his friends went on about the perceived sudden change in attitude towards them of Malfoy's mother.

"She's Malfoy's mother – what were you guys expecting?" said Harry.

"But she was so gracious!" Hermione argued, unable to believe Narcissa's nerve. "If it weren't for her Malfoy would've had us walking around in our birthday suits!"

"Oh I dare that sod would," Ron hissed, casting a critical and overprotective glance over Hermione as though suspecting their walking around naked – particularly Hermione – was exactly what Malfoy wanted. "Tibby should get you another robe – this one's a bit too transparent."

"Bollocks. I can barely see through to-" began Harry but dropped his words and looked away from Ron's warning glare.

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Hermione. "He doesn't want anything to do with me."

"I never said he did," Ron countered a little too squeakily.

"I'm a Mudblood, remember?"

"Don't call yourself that, Hermione!" Ron hissed.

"It doesn't mean anything to me as I've told you before," Hermione insisted. But even Harry did not buy it. "Besides, why do you care? What were you doing when those portraits were swearing at me with their faces? You were in your own little place, staring at the pedestals and tiles and appreciating the craftsmanship of the door knobs!"

"I didn't hear any of them say anything to you," argued Ron weakly.

"Yes but they just about said things with their expressions. So don't walk up on a moral 'pedestal' and try to make yourself all-caring – you're not Dumbledore…" And she reached the point of no return.

Thirty minutes later Ron still could not stem the tide of tears.

"What if he's dead?" sobbed Hermione into Ron's shoulder. She wiped her nose with her robe and left a smear of mucus on her cheek. Harry, disgusted, thought it rude to leave it there.

"Don't say things like that, Hermione," soothed Ron as he rubbed her back.

"Yeah. Don't say things like that," said Harry quietly. It was his soft, haunted voice that stopped Hermione's sniffs and tears.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she sobbed after a moment. "I know how much you and Dumbledore-"

"Don't start with that please," Harry moaned. "I just—We have a normal relationship, like student and teacher. I just want to know that my headmaster all right, too."

Hermione did not respond to this, and her silence was louder blaring her scepticism at his statement than anything she could have said. Harry did not like the look she and Ron just shared.

"I don't think he's my grandfather or something!" he abjured. He had been reclining against his continental pillow but now sat upright on his knees. Hermione swallowed and Ron looked at his duvet. Harry folded his arms and looked way. After a minute of silence he whispered, "I just want to hear he's still alive."

"We, too, Harry," replied Hermione softly.

He could barely escape his grief and he fought with his throat to swallow it down. But so consuming was his dread that it kept stealing his breath and he tried to catch another on top of the one on its way out, as though he were on a flight of stairs whose steps were falling just as he set his foot on them. In an attempt to find relief, and with some hesitation, he declared, "It was Snape."

His hesitation was justified when Ron and Hermione lost all sombreness in their faces and broke into deep sighs of exasperation, suggesting that the issue Harry was raising was a thorn that has been in their sides for too long.

"I'm telling you, he sold us out," Harry maintained over Ron's and Hermione's exhausted mutters and shaking of their heads. "Who else could've blown our cover?"

"I'm just not going through this with you again," Ron told Harry bluntly.

"I will off you myself personally if I hear that one more time from you," swore Hermione, a hand to her forehead. "Bugger the myth of the Chosen One."

"What should be worrying you instead of doubts about Snape's real allegiance which I've already _disproved_ are the collars we're going to be wearing tomorrow," Hermione pointed out venomously.

Harry loathed the satisfaction that seeped from her mouth when she said "disproved." But the truth in her words were undeniable and had given him a disconcerting notion to think about. And he simply did not feel like doing so. Simultaneously their hands came up to their necks and rubbed them anxiously.

"Smother our magic," murmured Ron. "Should've just done it then and landed one right in that concave little head of his. He enjoyed saying that."

Every time this impending reality surfaced Harry's heart would suddenly race. "Malfoy said our wands are hidden somewhere in this place," Harry recalled, stilling caressing his neck. "We have to find them. There has to be a day when both he and his mother aren't here." Harry did not know why the idea of having his magic stifled was even more frightening than that of losing his life. Ron was a pureblood but Harry was sure he did not feel so terrified. Not this terror he felt. "But fuck, there's Tibby," he hissed. He swallowed, fearful, his eyes brimming with the sunlight pouring into the room.

Ron was trying hard not to look at Harry. "She's never around unless she's summoned though, is she?"

"She might regularly do her rounds around the manor," Harry suggested. "You know, just check on things every now and then here and there, like a conductor."

"A wha-? Oh, like those blokes trolling the Express?" said Ron. "But shouldn't she be relegated to the kitchen or something? She's a bloody house-elf – can't have different duties to the elves in Hogwarts."

"I mean, if we had our wands—at least—even with our magic smothered..." Harry buried himself in his mire of thoughts.

"They would be totally useless," sighed Hermione. "Little better than twigs in our hands."

"But we'll still have them," contended Harry. He turned to Ron and Hermione, who looked at him plainly trying hard to believe in what he was trying to say, which was that their wands' physical feel and presence in their hands was still better than not having them at all. It was something of a starting point.

"But don't you think they'll notice if they're missing?" Hermione asked delicately.

"And we'll probably never find them. I mean look at this place." Ron spread out his arms as he gazed around Harry's sprawling room, a microcosm of the suddenly insurmountable immensity of the manor. Just the distance between the door and his bed said enough for Harry. They would never find their wands.

"Yeah," Harry replied shortly. He suddenly felt like a drama queen, like he was overreacting about everything: first about Dumbledore, then his wand. He felt an ugly mixture of shame at his conceitedness and selfishness, and it took a great deal to swallow it, like a vile cough syrup.

"Let's look on the bright side," Ron offered. "We'll be getting real food three times a day. How often can you say that these days?"

Harry resumed his reclining position on top of his continental pillow and picked at his glasses.

"You should ask Malfoy's mother to repair those for you," advised Hermione.

"'Cause the ferret's mother is that much more a good person than her son is," drawled Ron, rolling his eyes. "Wouldn't be sure about that after her true colours came out to today. She's a dragon lady. If anything, she's worse than Malfoy – Malfoy had to have inherited his ferrety-ness from somewhere, right?"

"I'd bet he'd have inherited more from Lucius Malfoy," Hermione said darkly, undoubtedly remembering the beginning of second year in Flourish and Blotts.

"Blimey! Yeah, where the bloody hell is that poufy old tart?" Ron cried in astonishment. "Can't believe I forgot about him! That bastard must be right by You-Know-Who's side sniffing his arse while he's killing people off."

"Well I think we can assume we're safer so long as he's still out there and not here," reasoned Hermione. "Of course that won't be forever." She had a slightly proud look about her.

"You know," said Harry, shifting slightly, "I would've thought Malfoy would be out there with his father and his mates learning to become one of them."

"I would think not," said a voice not among them. They jumped a foot in the bed as their eyes darted to the door. "He's dead."

Malfoy was framed by the door, looking suddenly taller in the doorway with his white-blond hair brushed behind his ears onto his back, accentuating his pointy profile, and a wand in his hand.

Harry, Ron and Hermione, who were all piled up onto each other, gazed at Malfoy as he slowly entered the room, closed the door most alarmingly and approached the edge of the bed. He stopped about a metre in front of it and folded his arms, his wand still in his fisted hand and pointing up at the ceiling like an ominous, warning gesture of a finger.

"I imagine the Dark Lord would find it incredibly amusing you think my father's face would be in his rear on their missions."

It took several seconds for Harry to find his voice. "Yeah you would, considering you're as sick as him."

"I'm tempted to take that as a compliment," said Malfoy.

"Don't," replied Harry. Ron and Hermione shifted off him and he sat up.

The wand pointing at the ceiling in the crook of Draco's elbow twitched.

"You don't scare us, Malfoy," Harry spat.

"I doubt I do," agreed Malfoy. "But you shouldn't be too fast in assuming my father's extracurricular activities. He was growing more and more ill with the passing days, you see. He simply wouldn't have it. But he didn't even have strength left to take his own life. He looked up at me from way down there on his deathbed. I guarantee you it wasn't a natural passing."

Malfoy and Harry stared hard into each other for a long time. But Harry finally fell into the temptation of glancing at the wand in Malfoy's hand again. It had done murder...

"Let me never see you three together in one room again. Be ready by nine tomorrow morning." Malfoy turned on his heel and swept out of the room.

"Don't we get a courtesy tour of the house?" Harry called.

In feeble defiance Harry made Ron and Hermione stay a little longer in his room in case Malfoy came back to check on them. But eventually the daring factor wore out and Ron and Hermione did leave, and they all spent the rest of the afternoon in separate rooms.

There was nothing to entertain Harry save for watching the sky dim through his window. After ten idle minutes of this, even the bookshelf beside him was starting to look more interesting. In spite of himself, and after fixing together the two pieces of his glasses with a string from his robe, Harry briefly went through the books, finding them no less repulsive than Hermione had. Unfortunately this only bit out an hour of his very long day. He left the book stand and went over to the escritoire and pulled at the drawers, pushing stuff around until he extracted a stunning metallic eagle quill and a pad of parchment whose cover read "XeroPyrus by Xander, Your Leading Manufacturer of the World's Safest Parchment (Suitable for bloody transactions)".

It registered how sad his existence was when he had to resort to entertaining himself by drawing on parchment. But he thought perhaps if he were to hold onto his sanity, he could do so by keeping track of his thoughts and experiences. Resolving himself a few doodles later, he ripped off the page on which he had drawn Snitches and the slew of Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers Hogwarts had seen, and wrote on a clean page, "Day 1."

Even before dinner his pride had long surmounted the mortification of starting a diary. By seven o'clock he had poured his heart and mind out on seventy-two inches of parchment. This was interspersed with regular visits to the bathroom, careful perusal of what were proving to be Dark-themed books (again in spite of himself) and lengthy spells of staring up at his canopy on his bed. In doing this he surprisingly found his mind at its most creative yet. Then he would return to the escritoire and jot down his ideas and thoughts. Perhaps he should zone out more often. At least he had a good excuse for Hermione now.

And often his mind would fall back to the time before they were captured and Dumbledore would hold nightlong Order meetings, and Mrs Weasley was seldom there to bar him or Ron or Hermione from attending them. He recalled the endless planning and endless sheets of building plans and terrain maps; the desperate quiet that would suddenly fall and the thrill that would follow when someone shared a nugget of knowledge, of something they all had not considered, or something new one of them had found out on their assignment. Or the anxious wait for someone they hoped would return from their assignment and the hope that they had new information.

But just being in Dumbledore's presence and letting his deep voice wash over him in a soothing spray like a buttery warmness rich with the promise of safety and certainty, was for most of the time enough for Harry and all he needed. He would pretend he was asleep whenever he heard the stairs beyond his and Ron's room creak louder until the door whined open and with the thin slice of light from the door he peeked at a shining, handsome, waist-length beard and the glint of half-moon spectacles, behind which bright blue eyes watched him to confirm to their owner that he, Harry, was all right. And he would sleep so much better.

By that time Harry only seldom attended his classes. Had he had his way he would not have attended any. But Dumbledore had come to Mrs Weasley's aid and reasoned it would look suspicious if Harry Potter suddenly seemed to have dropped out of school. Explaining his intermittent absences from class as due to illness was already pushing it.

Voldemort had grown more furious and paranoid with the passing months. Furious because they were foiling his plans of murder and destruction at every turn, and paranoid that someone close to him was leaking information to Dumbledore, revealing where they would strike next to have the Order suddenly turn up. Naturally the weeks to follow were hard on Snape, who had to endure the suspicions of his colleagues and the long spells of torture from his master. Fortunately Snape's will power was impossibly immense and his Occlumency skills unmatched, and so Voldemort finally believed he was not the spy.

They had surmised Voldemort had had enough with defeat the moment they received word that he, not sated with targeting random Muggle suburbs, was coming straight for Hogwarts only minutes before. The warning came from a Patronus the shape of a silver doe. That day happened to be one of the few on which Harry was at Hogwarts. And it was the day Harry felt his first stab of irony: of all the places where they could have captured them it was Hogwarts, declared by Hagrid the safest place in the world, except for Gringotts, of course.

The Great Hall rung with the low nasal twang of Snape's voice: "They are coming."

The Patronus had just flown in from the ceiling in candlelight and floated over onto the High Table across Dumbledore, who sat with his fork and knife still in his hands and his beard tossed over his shoulder to keep it from landing in his food. The seat immediately to his left next which belonged to Snape was empty. Dumbledore stopped chewing. The Hall had fallen silent. Harry stared at him from the Gryffindor table along with Ron and Hermione and the rest of the Great Hall. The Patronus then swirled and folded into nothingness. Dumbledore stared through the fading mist, at the massive oaken doors. He stood up, placed his hands on the table and looked solemnly down at the faces of his students.

"This will proceed in an orderly fashion: the professors will lead their Houses to their offices. There they will allow each student to use their fireplaces to Floo back home. If you have friends who live in the Muggle world, please take them with you and explain the course of events to your parents. Do not attempt to return to your dormitories for your belongings. In absence of your Head of House, Slytherin, you will split up and follow Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Professors, if you'll rise. We don't have much time."

Professor McGonagall, Sprout and Flitwick rushed to their House tables and beckoned at them.

"Gryffindor, this way!" called McGonagall. "Come on, Potter, move it!" she screamed, worry deepening the lines on her face. As though fighting the temptation to grab him by the scruff of his neck she did so to the Creevey brothers and marched to the doors.

Sprout wobbled fast down the table of her House, leading it towards the door. Flitwick's wand was sending red shower sparks in the air to indicate his whereabouts to his students since he barely reached the knees of his shortest charge.

"Professor!" Harry yelled at Dumbledore, running in the opposite direction of where McGonagall wanted him go.

"Potter!" McGonagall shouted, craning her neck over the churning sea of students flowing out the Hall. She noted the reluctance of her House to move quickly as they watched Harry heading over to Dumbledore. "This way, students!" she shrieked at them futilely.

"Professor, is Voldemort coming?" Harry asked.

"Yes. Harry, please go with your House," said Dumbledore. Hagrid and Professor Moody, who had returned to teach fifth-year Defence, stood at his sides.

"But we can fight with you, sir," said Harry, gesturing at the Gryffindors behind him who were watching them and all of whom reached for their wands.

But far from heartened, Dumbledore became visibly angered.

"GRYFFINDOR!" bellowed McGonagall. "I have never seen this in my life! You will come with me to my office this instant!"

"Harry, take your fellow Housemates down to Professor McGonagall's office," Dumbledore commanded. "I do not want to see you doing nothing else but that. I have to summon the Order." And he turned his back on Harry and beckoned urgently at Moody and Hagrid as he led the way to the door behind the High Table.

"This is no time for your heroics, Potter. Listen to your Head," growled Moody, patting Harry on the shoulder before catching up with Dumbledore and Hagrid.

"But, Professor!" Harry yelled at Dumbledore. "I'm part of the Order!"

"POTTER! COME HERE THIS INSTANT!"

The three men disappeared behind the door. Harry turned around and ran over to his House. McGonagall twisted his ear and pulled forward. Despite Dumbledore's call for order, it was a mad scramble at the door as every Head of House wanted to get their students outside as quickly as possible. And the fact that it was night did not help. The darkened corridors bulged with the sound of a hundred footfalls and mutters of panic. Harry, Ron and Hermione struggled to keep hold of each others' hands in the moving throng of bodies. Their saving grace was that the warning had come at dinner time; had it came during class in the day while everyone was scattered across the castle, it would have been disastrous.

"Inside, everybody," instructed McGonagall after rushing through the door of her classroom and heading for the office adjoined to it. She was followed by the patter of school shoes and the drone of chairs and tables scraping the floor as they were pushed aside. The entire Gryffindor House was larger than her office could and classroom combined, and a good portion of students hung outside in the badly lit corridor, perhaps the most frightened of them all.

After reaching her fireplace McGonagall grabbed the closest student to her. Harry felt the small hand around his belt fist into a ball. He looked down behind him at Colin Creevey holding hands with his brother Dennis. Harry gave them a fixed smile.

"Do you know where you live?" McGonagall was demanding of a student, practically shaking him in her hands.

"P—Prestwick, Professor!" squeaked the student who held onto her wrinkled wrists.

"Prestwick where!" shouted McGonagall. "Do you know your street address?"

"Yes, professor!"

"Where're your friends? Is one of them Muggle-born?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then take this-" She threw Floo powder into his hand. "-and say your address loudly and clearly and throw the Floo powder in here. If your home doesn't have a fireplace, hope your neighbours' does. In you go!"

The student shuffled into the fireplace, squeezed his eyes shut at the hundreds of faces staring at him and yelled, "57 Boydfield Avenue, Prestwick!" He threw the Floo powder at his feet and a surge of green fire engulfed him. When they receded to the logs below he was gone.

"Next!" McGonagall cried.

Harry had realized in that moment they were not going to run through the rest of the students – they were not quick enough. After reaching the limit of her patience with the first-years, who had all been so shaken that half of them had not been able to recall the streets on which they lived – and some of them genuinely did not know – McGonagall had moved onto the slightly older students. Hence it had been no surprise why the owner of the hand holding onto his belt had been left behind along with his brother and the majority of Gryffindor House, the entire half of Slytherin and the school. Shortly after, Voldemort had touched down.

Harry stabbed the parchment and left a firm period at the end of his sentence. He only realized after looking around his room that it was awash not in natural light but that from the chandelier hanging below the ceiling. He stretched against the back of his chair, yawned and over his shoulder peered at the clock: two minutes past seven. Mid-yawn, Harry jerked in his chair and nearly clattered with it to the floor. He did achieve upsetting his glasses and making them uneven again. He left them behind in the room lest they were discovered, thinking them something of a secret that he still had them after all that time in captivity.

He knocked on Ron's door. "Ron!" He heard a few hissed swearwords, a scraping chair, nearing footsteps, and then the door swung open. Ron rolled out of his room.

"Bloody hell. Isn't Tibby supposed to tell us it's time for dinner?"

"I thought so, too!" replied Harry. They went over to Hermione's door and knocked.

"Be honest. What were you doing?" Harry asked Ron as he struggled to straighten his face.

Ron's eyes darted between him and the door handle. "Nothing much. I thought I might—you know—pass the time drawing."

"I knew it!" said Harry, quite certain Ron had done anything but draw.

"And you?" Ron asked a little bashfully.

"Same," Harry replied airily just before the door gave way to Hermione.

"We're late!" she whispered fretfully. "Well I knew we were but I wasn't going to face Malfoy alone, was I?" She snapped her door closed and they hurried down the corridor and hoped they remembered the path to the dining room.

It was a quieter affair than the one of lunch hours ago. This time Tibby knew exactly what slaves were fit to be offered, and that did not include wine. Breakfast the next day, however, had a new development.

"You'll have to eat on the floor with your hands as normal slaves – we have a guest this morning."

Harry could not decide which was colder: those words or her pale-blue eyes. Malfoy's mother stared at them expectantly from the other side of the table, her son seated next to her. Harry was glad there was no smirk of pleasure on his face. Otherwise he did not know what he would do. He, Ron and especially Hermione were rapidly growing less enchanted with Malfoy's mother.

"On the floor," ordered Malfoy, watching them closely.

Harry, Ron and Hermione obeyed without protest. Tibby appeared and served them breakfast. Harry almost regretted not using the forks and knives they were given the previous day at lunch, for they were now back to using their hands just as they had used them in their little prison inside Hogwarts. They were forced to listen to the clinks of cutlery as Malfoy and his mother ate with utensils on the other side of the room. They might not have minded this too much – it was only cutlery, after all – if they were so humiliated eating on the floor while others ate on seated twelve chairs away.

They ate quietly. Before Harry could finish licking his last finger he felt a vibration deep in his stomach. He paused and looked up at his friends, who looked back at him wonderingly.

"That will be our guest," they heard before a chair was tucked in and heels clicked on the floor out of the room. A few minutes later they heard voices coming nearer.

"Severus. We're glad you could join us," Narcissa was saying.

The two walked into the room. Snape stopped short of the three teenagers on the floor and looked down the length of his hooked nose at them.

"It's my pleasure, Narcissa," he replied silkily. He looked them over and out of the folds of his dark robes produced three bejewelled collars.

_I bet it is_, Harry thought darkly.


	4. Touchdown

**Chapter 4**

**Touchdown**

Snape held the collars in his hands. Meanwhile Malfoy had come over.

"I must be brief," Snape said. "The potion is very delicate and time-consuming, and the Dark Lord deserves nothing less but the best."

"How soon do you expect the trials will be held?" Narcissa asked. There was something about the way she narrowed her eyes in curiosity that told Harry she really could not have been more uninterested.

"Perhaps a fortnight from now," answered Snape. His eyes glittered down at Hermione. "Then the truth shall be bared… But I brew another potion for him in increasing regularity, you see. It's more, er, cosmetic and far easier to make."

"Rise," Narcissa ordered at Harry, Ron and Hermione.

"Oh your deference isn't necessary, seeing as we're no longer at Hogwarts and I your teacher," Snape assured them. Harry could feel the man's relish at their defeat radiating off his smiling face. "Draco, if you'll be agreeable."

"Of course, Professor."

"You don't have to pretend we're not familiar in front of them, Draco. They're your property after all."

Draco's cheeks turned pink. He mumbled something like, "Yes, Severus," before taking the proffered collars and dropping to his knees.

As he watched the collars being fitted on the three Gryffindors, Snape mused, "I had to answer as to why slaves wore silver collars studded with at least three kinds of gemstones. Of course my colleagues understand your wealth but think it's quite wasted on them. I happen to agree."

The ensuing silence was undeniably tense for Narcissus, who seemed not to know where to look. And Snape, of course, was only too ready to let her endure the uneasy moment.

"Do these shining trinkets suggest a life more pampered than that of an average slave-child at any other Death Eater house I've cared to visit, Narcissa? They eat in the same room you do? Enjoy daily baths? Even have their own rooms, do they? The Dark Lord wouldn't be too pleased."

Narcissa let these words wash over her as she stared at a spot on the floor. "I supposed we could give them leather collars like our Giffies in the stable or move them there altogether," she finally retorted, her voice finely laced with sarcasm.

"Or better yet, the dungeon?" suggested Snape.

Harry almost could not control himself at the rush of hatred that filled him as he glared up into Snape's large nostrils. Fortunately he could not distinguish the damning face well because of his poor eyesight. Unfortunately his quiet mutiny was painful to his eyes.

"I had hoped it would be the last we saw of it," Narcissa said in a slightly weak voice. "The only person in this house fond of the dungeon has..."

"Perhaps you'll grow to cherish them in his honour then. At least pretend to use them. I fail to see how the Dark Lord will be thrilled knowing that his simultaneously most prized and despised captives are being pampered by his most loyal followers in the name of Malfoy. Draco, knowing what's required, I expected better of you."

Malfoy had saved the best for last. Before Snape had spoken, Harry was sure, as Malfoy kneeled in front of him, his hands holding the collar apart and reaching for his neck, Malfoy was going to give him the tallest, smuggest, most triumphant smirk Harry had ever seen on him. But the words that caught him from above made his throat ripple and his reaching hands to falter. His lips twisted not in a face of arrogance but that of nervousness. Harry's heart stopped working entirely as he closed his eyes and braced himself for the cool metal that would chill his magic for a time unknown.

Staring at the black of his eyes, he felt a soft breeze of breath on the tip of his nose, a brush of nobly soft fingers, and finally, that chill of silver, circular and inescapable at any point, locking and clicking into place around his neck. Unable to breathe, he felt another breath on his face from Malfoy's lips, this time stronger, warmer, but shaken too. He fought with himself whether to open his eyes in defiance or keep them closed and let the horrible moment in which his sealed captivity was realized pass. With a strange thrill that gripped his heart into a furious pump, he opened his eyes, came face-to-blurry-face with Malfoy's vast grey eyes, and fastened his own eyes on them as Malfoy slowly rose to his feet. Harry knew then his defeat was complete.

"I want nothing to do with them, or any of this," Narcissa hissed, with a quiet ferocity. She grabbed onto her son's shoulders protectively.

Snape recovered himself quickly from his shock. "Choice is a luxury long ago relinquished upon the victory of Our Lord, Narcissa – you should know this," he hissed, his mouth twisting harshly. "Merely speaking these words is tantamount to treachery in this climate on both your part and mine. Now, I hope you'll consider my advice carefully for your own sake: act accordingly or you have no hope at all. It should be your prayer the Dark Lord never finds reason to suspect you – otherwise this conversation he will be privy to, and at that moment… you will be forsaken. I should leave now."

Snape gazed down at Draco, who was staring at his feet and shrouded by his mother. He looked nothing more than a child trying to understand a grown-up world. "Draco," Snape said, and he swept out of the room.

Draco watched the hem of Snape's dark robes whip out of sight. His eyes glazed over as he seemed to contemplate something serious. They all listened as the footsteps faded. Just as Narcissus opened her mouth to speak Malfoy interrupted her.

"I'll handle them, Mother."

His mother spared him a quick quizzical look before she departed with a soft, "Very well. I'll be in my study."

Malfoy waited for her footsteps to disappear before, with much heavier air, his gaze a little mellowed as though he suddenly had the bearings of an adult, he looked down at them wordlessly for a while. Snape's parting salute to him now decidedly sounded like an acknowledgement of his lordship of the manor and all the responsibilities that came with it.

"I think it's time for your first chores," he said finally. His eyes darted around the dining room; he seemed undecided. "Tibby."

_POP!_

"Master Draco has called Tibby," breathed the elf, bowing so deeply her nose nearly kissed the floor. This and the oiliness of her tone had clearly nauseated Hermione.

"Take the slaves to the library and make sure they get through dusting the whole of the A's today."

"Tibby is delighted to be taking the slaves, Master Draco."

As Malfoy strode out of the room he tossed behind his shoulder at the elf, "That will be Master Malfoy."

Tibby nearly had heart failure. She welled up and choked on her incredulity. "Master Malfoy," she whispered in Malfoy's wake, looking through the doorway through which he had just sloped into the distance. Had Harry never known Dobby, he would have thought Tibby's brimming eyes were not for the previous lord of the manor but cynically that she was so apologetic for addressing Malfoy incorrectly she was overwhelmed with her fault. Still, it looked a morbidly sorry and sickening sight a house-elf so acutely feeling for a master whom in all likelihood mistreated her, to guess the least.

But dutifully Tibby snorted away the tears and seeming grief, turned around and kindly requested their compliance: Harry, Ron and Hermione followed her without a word.

After entering the library and getting to work, they had to get used to the new sensation of having collars on their necks. Harry's had warmed to his skin and sat very close to his Adam's apple. He imagined finding it harder to swallow – which had grown more tempting to do unnecessarily all of a sudden – and harder to see the book he was dusting. Hermione looked shocked that Harry was curious enough to quickly peruse it after passing a duster over it and in spite of his lack of glasses to help him read.

"My eyes are getting really sore," Harry said.

"You could give them to Malfoy's mother to repair them like I said," Hermione said. "She—even though I don't know what to think of her anymore. One moment she's this, the other, that. I think she'll be understanding though – you can't do anything if you can't see. At the least you'll make a bad slave."

"Thanks, Hermione," said Harry, at which she made a dismissive noise at him spinelessly taking offence. "Tibby?"

_POP!_

"At your service, Slave Harry Potter."

"I really don't appreciate that," mumbled Harry.

"But Tibby is told it is what Harry Pot-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Never mind. Tibby, can you fix my glasses? I'm really struggling here."

Predictably Tibby went quiet as her big bright eyes darted left and right in careful contemplation of the propriety of aiding a slave in such a way and the possible consequences. She was driven to be more careful after her blunder during breakfast. Her hands twitched into half-formed fists for a moment, giving Harry a sudden flashback of Dobby's bandaged hands after he had punished himself.

"Tibby is thinking she must be asking Master Malfoy for permission," she finally said.

"Okay, go ask him," said Harry.

_POP!_

_POP!_

"But Tibby must make sure the slaves do what they are tasked with," squeaked Tibby, assuming most probably rightly that Malfoy would ask for an update on the slaves' progress the moment she saw her. She mustered the courage to ignore their incredulous expressions and rolled her large eyes over the clean spines of some of the books on the shelves. Then, eyes now plastered studiously and desperately on the floor, she disappeared with another _POP!_

It was another sad low for them that a house-elf was supervising them, that they had to perform and show they deserved, before they could ask for it, as basic a request as having one's requisite glasses fixed.

"Remind me again why you didn't summon Dobby so he could just break us out way before we ended up in this bloody shithole from the previous shithole we were in?" Ron said.

"Because-" began Harry, but Hermione cut across him.

"Because Dumbledore told him not to!" she growled. "That will _also_ be the last time that question is asked together with Harry's theories on Snape."

"But why, Hermione?" Ron whined. "Why did he bloody have to? We could've been out of there like that!"

Hermione took a deep breath, forcing her calm. "Because then they would've been on a nation-wide manhunt looking for Harry and us. Think of how many people who could've been tortured to force our whereabouts out of them. Dumbledore asked us to stay put and so we did. He wouldn't tell us to do so without a proper reason. He wouldn't tell us to do anything to hurt us."

"After letting Harry go to that graveyard with an unsuspected Portkey I wouldn't be so sure…"

"Oh my goodness, you're going to bring that up again?" Hermione said incredulously. Ron mumbled something inarticulate. "For the last time-" screeched Hermione, nearly pulling her hair out and squeezing every word through her teeth.

"I get it, I get it, all right!" snapped Ron. "We've gone through this enough times already."

"I'm glad it's finally sunk in that thick skull of yours! Took long enough! What, only two years?"

"All right!" called Harry, kicking into moderator mode and being experienced in it for some time now: Ron and Hermione have bickered like this ever since the moment they laid eyes on each other. All Harry needed to do now to extinguish the slimmest chance of another heated exchange, and better yet, have them avoiding each other's eye, was to suggest they should just get hitched and had his blessing.

"It wasn't me who was making nursery rhymes out of things from my beloved textbooks and singing them… Ouch!" Ron cried as the book he had just been hit with thudded onto the floor. "Harry, did you see-?"

"You deserved it. Now shush."

"What I'll do-" began Ron, but he was interrupted by Tibby's return.

"Master Malfoy cannot allow Tibby to repair Slave Harry Potter's glasses," Tibby told Harry with a slight dip of her head. Harry could not help but wonder if his request would have met a more positive reception had it come before Snape's visit.

"Oh," he said, short for words.

"Tibby must be going, Slave Harry Potter." And she snapped her fingers and disappeared again.

"I said ask his mother, not him," said Hermione. "Obviously his ego – much like you two – gets in the way of clear thinking; how are you supposed to do your chores if you can't see?"

"You mean an ego way over the quota any human is allowed, let alone us?" corrected Ron. "Who'd deny a person having his glasses fixed? That's cruel, even by Malfoy's standards."

"That's exactly where his standards are," replied Harry, gazing down at the blurry book he could not read, let alone gather if he had dusted properly or not. Then he had a sudden stroke of inspiration: he should deliberately be a bad slave since he was effectively handicapped and act as though it were worse than it actually was. "I'll just have to bother him with it until he loses it and fixes them. Sending Tibby back and forth wouldn't fall under abuse in your view, would it, Hermione?"

"In this particular instance, no," answered Hermione tightly with a brief glare at Harry. "You need your glasses – without them you're basically no less an invalid than a wine-soaked Fat Lady buried under rolls of her own fat on the floor of her portrait after an eating binge with Violet in the kitchens."

_Why can't we just win for once?_ Harry asked himself, now more firmly of the opinion that females had an age-old compulsion to always appear superior in the fields of wit and sarcasm as though to compensate for their perceived inferiority in, perhaps, the world of work and real decision-making.

"And do elves feel tediousness?" Harry then asked against his instincts of self-preservation. "Oh why don't I just find out myself? Tibby?"

There was a loud pop and Tibby reappeared. "What more can Tibby do for Slave Harry Potter?"

"A lot more," Harry harrumphed. "Er, Tibby, could you ask Malfoy if he could fix my glasses for me?"

It was clear by the quizzical furrowing of her scrunched forehead that Tibby was working out if she should inform Harry that her master was hardly going to change his mind minutes after her first attempt.

"Tibby is coming right back, Slave Harry Potter," she finally said surprisingly and vanished.

"I swear, if she says Slave Harry Potter one more time," Ron snarled.

When Tibby returned seconds later she was shaking like a leaf.

"Master Malfoy is not wanting to repair Slave Harry Potter's glasses," she whispered, her voice catching.

"What did he do to you?" Hermione gasped, looking appalled. "Did he shout at you?"

"Master Malfoy is having every right to shout at Tibby for angering his nobleness, Slave Hermione Granger," whispered Tibby.

"No he doesn't!" exploded Hermione. "Tibby, you don't have to put up with Malfoy whenever he feels like a mood swing for goodness-!"

"Tibby, please ask Malfoy-" began Harry.

"Harry, I swear I'll stop being your friend if you send her back!" Hermione hissed.

Harry did send Tibby back, and forth – numerous times – and Hermione's threat only extended to a silent treatment sprinkled with dirty looks at him. Ron enjoyed himself for the first time in a long while as Hermione's anger for once did not lie on his side.

In spite of Harry's numerous attempts Malfoy did not repair his glasses but paid him a visit that night in his bedroom. Minutes before, Harry was back at the escritoire penning down another batch of emotions and the undulating highs and lows he had felt during that day. Malfoy found him on his bed staring up at the canopy again, when his mind was most buoyant and easily swept away by the streams of daydreams. This time he was taken by the memory of what happened after Voldemort touched down on Hogwarts.

McGonagall was just about to shove Colin and Dennis Creevey into the fireplace to Harry's relief when the flames roared and surged green and the face of a woman with huge bulging eyes, a wide, heavy mouth, and a pink bow on top of her head appeared and said in a sweet, hugely off-putting simper, "Going somewhere, little children?"

The younger students screamed just as something dark flew past McGonagall's window. Unshaken by the woman in the fire as though she had her number, McGonagall strode away from her fireplace and looked out her window. Meanwhile the face in the fire vanished as the green fire rose and roared again, replaced by that of Dumbledore.

"Hogwarts," the green face announced, at which point McGonagall jumped in her heels and Harry felt the tiniest thrill of relief in that deep voice. "Avoid the fireplaces as from now on – they are being monitored by the Ministry. It has fallen."

"Albus?" breathed McGonagall in shock, a hand to her mouth. "What is happening?"

"Minerva-" But before Dumbledore could reply any further, her question was echoed by several other hollow voices from the fireplace probably belonging to the other professors from their own offices.

"…The bloody hell is going on?" cried Professor Sinistra, whose voice Harry had never heard the Astronomy teacher sound so distressed and so rude to Dumbledore.

"Albus, something—something dark just flew past my window," McGonagall said, her chin quivering. "I don't know what it is… I-"

"Death Eaters, Minerva," answered Dumbledore gravely, and the cacophony of voices from the fireplaces fell into silence. "Hogwarts has been surrounded."

It was not this fact that frightened Harry more than that it was Dumbledore who said it, and the succinct way in which he did it.

"Surrounded?" McGonagall said in a high voice, clutching onto her tartan cloak with a bleached hand.

"I cannot offer an escape route over the fireplace as it's being monitored as we speak-" Dumbledore's face flickered as the flames threatened to surge again. The voice of the toad-like woman broke through his face.

"On one of your little heroic speeches again, are we, Dumbledore? No one has the temerity let alone the wherewithal to threaten the Ministry of-"

Dumbledore's voice distorted as he struggled to force himself through the lady's face, and Harry, including McGonagall, could not figure out what he was saying. The flames rose and spat again, and when they subsided to the logs below, Dumbledore's face was gone.

"Oh dear," said McGonagall quietly. She turned to look at her office crammed with students in every corner. "It seems the Ministry of Magic is unaware it has been infiltrated. Then again the Undersecretary to the Minister was never the sharpest-" She stopped herself here, perhaps thinking it unbefitting of an adult to throw insults to a person who was not there to defend herself. "Students, I'm afraid I don't know what to do…" McGonagall's eyes welled up as she stared down at them. She seemed disillusioned and appalled by her lack of leadership. "We have no orders to follow, Dumbledore reckons Death Eaters have surrounded the castle, and even the Ministry of Magic itself is now virtually an enemy…"

But then came screams and mutters that travelled from outside in the corridor, through the Transfiguration classroom and into the office. McGonagall started backwards in fright and the students in her office screamed when something the likes of a Patronus floated over their heads and stopped just short of her. The silvery, mist-like form was the shape of a phoenix, and from its beak a deep, familiar voice issued.

"To the Great Hall, quickly!"

The phoenix, which looked much like the silver doe they had seen minutes earlier, vanished into thin air. Before the message could register to Harry in the midst of his astonishment, McGonagall bellowed, "To the Great Hall, students!"

And there was an even madder rush out into the corridor. The tide of bopping heads, crisscrossing legs and scattering feet spilled out into the moonlit corridor as they all ran to the Great Hall for their lives.

"Why didn't Dumbledore just contact her with that thing in the first place instead of doing it over the fireplace and waste all that time?" panted Ron as he was jostled by the moving crowd around them.

Holding both Ron's and Harry's hands, Hermione replied, "Obviously because not every teacher is in the Order of-" As they ran Harry stepped on her foot before she could reveal more. "Oh, sorry!" she squeaked.

When they rushed into the corridor bearing the doors of the Great Hall, they found a sea of what seemed like half of the school surging through the doors like a tidal wave, while teachers had their wands out and cast their eyes in every direction for signs of danger.

"Pomona, where's Dumbledore? What's happening?" called McGonagall as she ran with her high heels clicking loudly on the floor towards Professor Sprout, whose bulges were wobbling with every jerk as she kept on the lookout. Her wand, as was McGonagall's in her, was ready in her hand.

By this time Ron had found Ginny's hand and Gryffindor mingled with the other streams of students and formed a confluence into the Great Hall while Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout had an anxious exchange. Harry just caught some of the latter's words before he was carried inside: "We don't know where Dumbledore is, if they've caught him or not…!"

He lost contact with Ron and Hermione again but they were in the Great Hall already. Relieved from being squashed no longer as the stream separated towards the four House tables, they went over to the Gryffindor table and anxiously dropped into their usual seats. But this time Hermione abandoned hers opposite Harry and Ron and took one on Harry's other side. Soon Seamus, Dean, Neville, Parvati, Lavender, Colin, Dennis and Ginny took theirs around them.

"It's gonna be all right," Harry soothed the Creevey brothers with a smile after spotting their white faces. The hurried rush of the other students around them was not helping their nerves either.

Knowing he was probably lying to their faces, for the first time Harry initiated contact: he reached over and held Colin and Dennis around the shoulders. On any other day Colin would have zoomed into his middle in a blur of red and grey like a magnet before Harry had even spotted or heard him coming. The brothers nodded diffidently at him. Rubbing their arms, he peered over his shoulder at the Slytherin table: Parkinson, Goyle, Crabbe and Blaise Zabini sat slightly huddled together in a small, tight circle. Malfoy was not among them.

It was a few minutes before all the students were inside and seated in the Great Hall, which Harry scanned and saw that at least two thirds of the school was present and the rest had presumably escaped through the fireplaces to safety. The teachers were outside keeping an eye out for Death Eaters.

Around the House tables were the kind of murmurings that went around before an event such as a ball or Quidditch match was about to begin. The feeling in the air to Harry was rather like that of the time when the contestants of the Tri-Wizard Tournament were to be announced.

"Why did they bring us to one place and give the Death Eaters one huge target?" Seamus said furiously as though he knew all there was to know about tactical defence. "And don't give me that 'we're stronger together than we are apart' crap. You'd figure it'd make things more difficult for them if they had to hunt us out one by one all over the castle. I mean, they wouldn't waste their time doing it."

"So if you were stuck in some dusty, unused classroom on the seventh floor," began Ginny, rushing over her words in seeking no doubt to relieve her anxiety and vent out at someone, "do you think you'd survive without food? Because no one would know you're there – you'd be stuck all on your own. And they _will_ eventually find you because you'll be trying to find your fellow Housemates. If we're apart they'd know all they had to do was wait it out until we grew hungry and lonely and desperate and flush ourselves out!"

"Blimey, it was a bloody question. No need to get a bloody eppy over it," muttered Seamus. "Honestly, I'm not seeing all that's great about her," he whispered to Dean, who had dated Ginny. Dean did not dignify the observation with a response but looked away from Seamus as though his words were tedious and had heard them countless times before.

Harry knew it had been less than ten minutes but it felt like an hour before the doors of the Great Hall flew open and made a tremendous thud that shook their chests and spell-light flashed before their eyes. The students clung onto each other and watched in awe as the Death Eaters outnumbered, overpowered and made quick work of their teachers. They were then held up, muffled with strips of cloth and pushed inside as the Death Eaters proceeded into the Great Hall in a seemingly endless line of dark-cloaked figures snaking its way up.

About thirty Death Eaters parted ways and surrounded the Great Hall, spreading along its walls until there was about eight or ten standing along the longest sides – some of whom held the teachers – four on either sides of the doors, and eight in a neat line between the House tables and the High Table. This last line broke in the middle, making a space just big enough for one more person to stand in. The first figure in the line that stood closest to Harry was comparatively short. It only took the shivering hood, the stout build and the missing little finger on one of the hands partly shrouded in the oversized sleeve to put to Harry's mind a twitchy, stooped little man he had met two years ago.

"It's him!" he hissed at Hermione, who turned her quizzical frown on him.

"Who?"

"That perfidious arse Wormtail!"

"You mean my ex-rat?" Ron asked.

"Yeah!" Harry said. "He's still a rat all right, even if he is your ex."

"Ex-rat," Ron was quick to clarify. "Let's not forget the 'ex-' part."

"It's no use getting worked up over it, Harry!" Hermione hissed back. "Don't draw attention to us, please! Shush!"

Another figure, fourth from Harry before the space in the middle, stood with a slight lean backwards, and Harry could see wild, straggly hair dangling from the hood and feminine hands out of the arms of the robes. But before he could scan the fifth Death Eater standing before the space between him and the woman, a sudden silence smothered all murmurs and shuffling. Harry turned in his seat and followed the light footsteps of another man he knew.

The man's hood was down unlike that of every other Death Eaters and showed off a stunning sheet of diaphanous, silvery blond hair sloping luxuriously over broad shoulders onto his back, making the man's pointy profile all the more defined, with his clean brow, upturned nose and hard jaw line contrasting the curvy slope of his hair. He held a cane aloft in one gloved hand as the scales of his boots reflected the soft candlelight of the Great Hall and clicked in step until he reached the front of the Hall, turned around, stood in the middle of his fellow Death Eaters and smiled grandly at the students below him.

"Rise," Malfoy intoned.

Harry could not remember this part…

"Potter," Malfoy called. Harry heard a door snap closed and he snapped out of his thoughts.

He rose off his bed and sat up to see Malfoy standing at his door, one hand on the doorknob. The way Malfoy's hair curved over his ear and over his shoulder sent chills down Harry's spine.

Malfoy closed the door and said as he approached the bed and folded his arms, "You wanted your glasses repaired?"

It took a moment for Harry to place the relevance of the words in the daze in the wake of his daydreams.

"Er, yeah. I can't see without them."

Harry grabbed his glasses from the drawer of the escritoire, went over to Malfoy and proffered them. He was utterly oblivious to how it annoyed Malfoy that he was going about things so casually as though his master were not standing two metres in front of him. His comfort within his room did not impress Malfoy at all; the Slytherin's head appeared to be quivering fit to explode.

Harry raised his eyebrow in query.

"On the floor, now," Malfoy commanded, his words forced and clipped.

Harry's eyebrows rose higher. _Okay…_ Internally rolling his eyes, he dropped to his knees in front of Malfoy and looked up, still holding up his glasses at him. He wanted nothing more from him but that.

Malfoy of course stretched the moment out as he stared down the length of his little upturned nose at him. Finally he took the glasses out of his hand, slipped out his wand from two wide separate loops on the top of his belt, pointed it at his glasses and muttered, "_Reparo._" There was a cracking noise like glass or ceramic chipping, but when Malfoy held the glasses down to Harry, they looked brand new.

"Thanks," Harry said as he collected them.

Malfoy stared down at him for a while more before he ordered, "On the bed."

Harry's eyes widened slightly and lingered on Malfoy's face, for a moment allowing the craziest thought to frighten him before he rose to his feet, climbed on his bed and folded his legs underneath him.

"Let's make one thing clear here," Malfoy said. "You don't abuse my house-elf like that by sending her back and forth to me, you understand?"

"Perfectly."

When Malfoy did not speak further but continued to glare at him, Harry asked, "Was that all?"

"Shut up."

Harry's eyebrows rose again, but he held his tongue.

Malfoy kept quiet again. Then his eyes roamed over Harry's silver collar and then over his robes; Harry's toes scrunched in discomfort.

"Think you got it easy, don't you? Well, frankly you do, and that might change soon. You heard what Snape was saying: the Dark Lord wouldn't be too pleased with my mother pampering you and your friends."

This was the perfect time for Harry to give a sharp reply, perhaps even a taunt, but Harry, in spite of his screaming instincts, kept quiet against the words hanging on his tongue and the sudden quickening of his pulse as he assumed a familiar, exclusive space he fell into whenever he and Malfoy went sparring intensely. Even Malfoy's pause now was subconsciously intended for Harry to deftly insert some stinging retort.

"You're responsible for Tibby's frayed nerves," Malfoy said smoothly as though he had expected nothing from him all along, "so you'll have to do without a house-elf from now on."

Malfoy started to turn around while looking closely at Harry as though suspecting he was at least thinking of something sarcastic – and he was quite right – but finally strode over to the door and stepped out.

He might not have a house-elf at his beck and call anymore, but at least he had his glasses back. His immediate wish had been nothing but that. It would make diarising much, much easier.

Hopefully it was the last personal visit he had from Malfoy.


	5. Voldemort Victorious

**Chapter 5**

**Voldemort Victorious**

By the third day of their stay at Malfoy Manor there had developed a regularity of things. It was something remarkable to Harry that in no matter what situation he found himself – and he thought this was true for every person – there was always some way his mind would reduce the experience to something more manageable and so that it could slog through it with as much constitution left as possible on the other side. Only this marvellous coping ability could explain the resilient spirit of humanity. It was something he came to understand more clearly with every passing challenge, which to Harry meant, most haplessly, every year.

This nascent regularity was what headed off the unkindly edges around his outlook and toned down the untoward hues of the vista of his days as he stepped out with Ron and Hermione into the backyard. They had just been ordered by Malfoy through Tibby to groom and feed the "Giffies" and "Phiggles" in the stables, animals the likes of which they had never heard but were about to behold.

It was evident at breakfast that Snape's words have been weighing heavily on Malfoy's mind, as well as that of mother, Harry would later discover. The command to care for the animals smacked of spite undoubtedly borne from his encounter with Harry the previous night. Unable to think of any less a wholesome place to have them eat their breakfast, Malfoy had attempted, with the sort of abandon and whimsicality of a child, to make them eat down in the dungeons with the rats and its familiar sordidness. But he was struck and stopped by his mother's words.

"I won't allow you to be like your father. Over my dead body, my son."

So Harry, Ron and Hermione had eaten while staring at the wall of the dining room. Now they were walking through the sprawling garden behind the manor and into dreary morning daylight escorted by Tibby. Hermione gasped at the sudden burst of colour when her eyes landed on the bathroom-sized blocks of flowers bushes around which a pebble path carved its way. At the bottom of the garden stood a large greenhouse.

"Let's go over to the greenhouse just quickly!" Hermione enthused. Before Tibby could stop her, she wound her way through the garden to the glass building where, as she stared through the panes, she squealed, "Oh! There're so many different flowers and plants in here! It's a mini Garden of Eden! I think I can see a snakeshead fritillary! It's a rather poetic contradiction, that is, hey, Harry? It's part of the lily family but it's called a snakeshead!"

"Master Malfoy is going to be angry you're wasting time, Slave Hermione-"

"Oh shut it, will you!" Ron barked at the elf, which shrunk.

"Yeah. That's an incredible piece of information I was dying to know, Hermione," Harry called to her. "Absolutely charming. Come on then."

Hermione tore herself away from the greenhouse and the three of them continued to follow Tibby. A short staircase broke a long, monolithic hedge and at its bottom began a stone path that led them to the stable. Beyond it finally lay a picture of the countryside unobscured by the sheer expanse of the estate.

The plot was so vast such he could not tell where its boundaries lay and where the rest of the countryside began. There was a sign of neither a cobble road nor another house nearby – just stretches of multi-coloured patches of grass. Harry suspected a kind of Muggle-repelling charm to have been installed around the perimeter that made the estate and surrounding area invisible to Muggles.

To his left was a small hill, and quite a distance off in front of them the land slowly dipped into wilder territory, of the odd rock and bush backed by a long line of trees the preface of a forest. Just seeing this gave Harry an inkling of Draco's childhood, like the tinkle of the first coin in the can awaiting more pieces of knowledge about their owner, his house and their new reality.

While trying not to mind the uncomfortable draught going through his robe, Harry followed Tibby and his friends into the stable. The fact that they always barefoot, whether inside the manor or not, did not allow Harry to forget their inferiority, and again it bothered him far more than eating on the floor and facing away from the occupants in the room who were seated at the table did.

Two hours later they had grown friendly with some of the oddest creatures they had ever encountered. Suffice it to say the Phiggles were much cuter than the Giffies. Harry suspected the latter were descendent of hippogriffs because though their mouths were shaped like those of horses, they were as hard as two ceramic cups inverted onto their brims. Their feet resembled more those of ostriches, with a longer middle toe bearing a large deadly talon, also not unlike the hippogriff. The Giffies missed the wings, however, but kept a little of the plumage – boasting a seamless blend of bronze and gleaming chestnut fur along its body. Their nature seemed suspicious but not unduly distrustful as Ron came to find out.

Contrastably, the Phiggles were much smaller in comparison and looked like foals dappled with white spots. Even the youngest ones had a small tuft of shiny, inky black hair on their head like Harry's. Their strangest, eeriest, but most captivating trait was their pure silver eyes. They had no whites or irises or pupils but just two chillingly piercing silver balls. And the gracefulness with which they bent their heads down and munched on the hay, the elegance with which they cantered outside the stable, and the ethereal shine of their coats in the sunlight, turning them from white-spotted grey to gorgeous silver, put to Harry's mind everything he knew about unicorns. Phiggles were just second best to perhaps the most beautiful animal Harry had ever laid eyes upon. And judging by how rapidly they had taken to Ron, they were just as overly trusting as unicorns.

"I guess you warm up to them if you allow yourself to," Ron said as he stroked a Giffy along its back. His reluctant admiration of the Giffies came after he was viciously thrown onto his back when he tried to mount one. Unfortunately either the Giffy had not been in the mood or was more inclined to handle Harry's range of weight because Harry mounted it successfully.

"I still prefer these cute little things!" squealed Hermione, which was precisely why Ron preferred the Giffy. She beamed down at a young Phiggle which seemed so mesmerized by her affection it was trying to climb onto her to lick her face.

"Why does everything always go your way?" grumbled Ron at Harry in a good-natured way. He emerged from the stable friends with the Giffy he had attempted to climb but had thrown him off. "What's so special about you and your scrawny little arse?"

They followed Tibby towards the manor after she reappeared and looked rather frantic when she discovered them playing with the animals. She had told them Malfoy wanted them back in the library tackling the B's this time.

"Maybe because this scrawny little arse actually warned the bloody thing I was going to climb it," replied Harry. "You just all of a sudden jumped on it from behind – it didn't see you coming. What would you have done if someone did that to you?"

"Bollocks. It's not the first time animals just seem to like your scrawny little arse more than any other human on this planet. Or maybe except for Hagrid."

"I happen to agree your scrawny little arse has some lucky effect on animals, and people needless to say," said Hermione in a soft mutter as though the words painful her.

"Come off it," hedged Harry, blushing. "Speaking of this scrawny little arse, I think Malfoy wants it."

There was a small clicking noise. When Harry turned to Ron he found him holding his neck gingerly with tears in his eyes: Ron had whipped his head so quickly to Harry that he had cricked his neck.

"What?" said Ron coolly while Harry was trying to recover from his mirthful fit.

Hermione started looking hot under the collar. "Sorry?"

"He came to my room last night. Got a weird vibe from him," Harry told his friends, grimacing as though he had a bad taste in his mouth.

"Harry," began Ron breathlessly, clutching his chest as though he had just run a mile, "you don't just bloody drop this kind of shit like that. What the fuck does he want your scrawny little arse for? Getting private visits from him now, are you? I suppose the first time he was there he thought Hermione and I were in the way."

"Shut your cakehole, all right?" snapped Harry. "I was just going along with the joke with the scrawny little arse thing which you started. He was just being an arse again as usual."

"You haven't answered the question: what did he want?" Ron asked firmly as he scrutinized Harry closely and continued to rub his neck.

"Nothing," Harry answered exasperatedly. "He came to repair my glasses finally. And he had some shit to say as always."

After a moment Ron unclenched everything and released Harry from his questioning stare. "Yeah, they're fond of their little speeches Malfoys are, aren't they? Remember our first day here? He had two of them, both in the afternoon. Oh and just who could forget that mother load his father dropped – I guess that would be a father load? – after the Death Eaters stormed in?"

Harry certainly had not forgotten.

The silence in the Great Hall was so thick Harry felt as though it had smothered the air inside the room, plunging the occupants in a vacuum as they looked ahead at the figure at the front of the Great Hall with the white-blond hair and dark robes, a clashingly sad contrast.

"Good evening... Hogwarts," greeted Lucius Malfoy, savouring the name with a nostalgic twinkle in his eye. "Well, suffice it to say it's been a while. And nothing seems to have changed one bit..." He gazed around the Great Hall at the floating candles, the High Table and the small square opening in the ceiling for owls to deliver their morning packages. "Forgive us. We're so deeply sorry you're caught right in the middle of this little tug-and-war we like to play with each other every so often. Unfortunately for you your headmaster is a rancid spoilsport and likes things to go his way no matter what. But this time we thought we'd outsmart him... Oh, Draco, you're just in time."

More footsteps sounded. Harry looked towards the back of the Hall, where he saw coming down the aisle between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw table two figures dressed in the same dark cloak every Death Eater wore. The taller of the figures wore high heels which clicked loudly on the floor as they approached Lucius.

Lucius took the smaller figure by the shoulder as he said to the taller one, "Come on now, Narcissa. You can take the mask off. This is a moment of glory for Our Lord – there's no need to hide identities so you can still return to your life in the daylight. Death Eaters..." Lucius turned to the men along the walls. "...this is it – there is nothing left to fear. Your normal lives are no longer necessary. We have the world!"

There rang a malicious cheer all around the Great Hall as the Death Eaters concurred and took off their masks. People who held jobs and were perhaps husbands and fathers revealed themselves in their conviction of the irrevocability of their master's triumph. Lucius lifted the mask off his son and wife, who stood with a deadpanned stare over the House tables at the doors. Lucius was clearly restraining himself from demanding any more from his family. He rested his hands on his son's shoulders behind him. Harry was not privy to this, and neither was the rest of the school, as they were all horrified seeing the man next to the straggly-haired woman: their own Professor Snape.

"As I was saying," continued Lucius, "we thought we had to make your headmaster play ball and outsmart him in the process. Draco, I was just about to let you keep watch of Potter there, Dumbledore's secret weapon. This time we're taking no chances."

He gave Draco's shoulders a pat and a squeeze before he released him, watching his son stride over to Harry.

"Stand up," Malfoy ordered the Gryffindor, a wand erect in his hand.

Nowhere near recovered from his shock at seeing Snape in full Death Eater regalia, Harry gazed at Malfoy standing before him. He thought Malfoy must have seen his defiance coming. For one, Harry thought the rest of the school almost expected it of him. For another, the opportunity to try to humiliate Malfoy in front of his father and see his reaction would almost be masochistic to pass up.

He glared up at Malfoy. Fortunately for the Slytherin, his father was still speaking meanwhile.

"...That little chat Severus and I had of recruiting an army of Death Brothers, and today it has come to fruition. Coordinated simultaneous attacks on the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts will certainly go a long way to secure the Dark Lord's dream. Soon enough you will call him your Almighty Lord, for then he will rule all the world. But for the immediate moment, his concern is far less epic..." Lucius laid his eyes upon Harry and his son. "...In fact, as small as five feet and seven stone."

"It's high time we cut the loose ends!" barked the straggly-haired woman, suddenly animating to life at the end of the line of Death Eaters. Her popping eyes, the dark bags under them and her loosely swinging arms lent her a rather manic, capricious look. She pranced over to Lucius and hung on his shoulder, swaying back and forth on her feet. "Don't worry, dear Draco, you won't have to worry about him for long: when the Dark Lord comes it'll be the end of the legend of the Boy Who Lived!"

There was a great upswing of rapturous noise as the Death Eaters cheered victoriously.

In a bored, drawling voice, Lucius said, "Your aunt's words should embarrass you, Draco. Control your subject. This is good practice."

It could not have been clearer to Harry that Malfoy was terrified and in two minds as to what to do. Harry did not see the strike coming but later felt the ringing sting to the side of his face.

"I said stand up!" yelled Draco as he suddenly took initiative. When Ron, Dean and Seamus jerked and nearly stood up in their seats, the Death Eaters behind them shot them with spells. They Gryffindors bellowed in pain and fell back into their seats with their robes smoking.

"No. In fact, get on the floor. Get on the floor!" commanded Malfoy. He grabbed Harry by the collar and threw him down, training his wand on him. "I want you to sit right in the middle." He dragged Harry over to the middle of the aisle between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff table and made him sit still. Harry breathed heavily through his nostrils as he glared up over the wand in his face at Malfoy. But he felt that much powerless.

"No, bring him over here, son," said Lucius. "I'm sure the rest of the Hall would like to keep him in view as a source of comfort of sorts..." Lucius' lips twitched. "... It will also allow for the speediest presentation to the Dark Lord."

While Malfoy forcefully moved Harry over, Bellatrix Lestrange was busy down his mother's throat.

"Still think you're on some high moral pedestal staring at the wall like you're not here?" she jeered. "You've got the cloak on, may as well bloody act the part! Ha!" And with a last caw of ridicule, she took off from her to join more festive spirits.

Harry was forced into position before the row of Death Eaters, just in front of the empty space which must have been reserved for Lucius. He stared at Malfoy's mother after being jostled by Bellatrix and thought what another tragedy of humanity: a mother forced to wear dark robes like the next Death Eater and murderer. She appeared as though she wanted to be anywhere else but here.

Harry occasionally stared up at Malfoy standing next to him, sometimes for no reason at all and sometimes long enough just to catch his eye and look away in disregard to convey to the Slytherin that he could not care less if Malfoy stood and breathed next to him. In a plain attempt to reinforce his authority over Harry, Malfoy jabbed his knee into his side, but Harry felt the pain in his scar.

It was a masterful entry. He gave no clue or warning. He awaited no moment of introduction or dramatic silence. Voldemort walked into the Great Hall at a time when anyone's attention could have been anywhere: on the person they were murmuring with fearfully, on Harry after he suddenly screamed out in pain, on a straggly-haired woman capering between the tables, or on Lucius Malfoy bragging about world domination. This quiet, unfathomed entrance made its moment of notice a far more personal and more frightening experience.

"My Lord, you made it," fluttered Lucius amidst the screams and gasps that filled the Great Hall. He looked around with wild adulation in his eyes as though he did not know what to do himself or asking himself why no one else seemed as touched by his lord's presence as he was.

Voldemort stood beside Lucius. He cast his eyes across the Great Hall, his red slit eyes taking in the students in front of him, his Death Eaters along the walls and the gagged teachers of whom they had hold. And then, inevitably, the moment of horror came, and Voldemort turned his eyes behind him at Harry. He smiled.

Malfoy's body stuttered and stilled as though he were a slab of ice when the red slits moved on to him. But Voldemort looked away a moment later and considered the students in front of him. Harry heard Malfoy release his breath.

"Welcome," Voldemort proclaimed in his high, clear voice, "to a new ear – the era of Lord Voldemort. This is nothing of a surprise to me – I've seen this day, I've seen this happen, so many times in my head it grew to become a fierce obsession. You've done well, Lucius and Severus."

"My Lord," the men breathed as they went to their knees.

"Stand," Voldemort commanded, and so they did.

"I don't doubt you must feel betrayed," Voldemort said to the school. "Severus has been an old servant of mine longer than he has taught here, so ingenious as to fool whom many see as the greatest man of the modern era. But I will show you, as Severus as shown you..." Dumbledore was carried into the Great Hall in ghastly chains that wrapped across his beard and around his midnight-blue robes. "...that this great wizard is nothing more than just a man, a simple overgrown foetus blindly gifted the epithets he has fooled everyone into thinking he deserves. Can Dumbledore breathe fire? Can he fly upon the air? Can he, like no other man alive, live forever?"

A pair of Death Eaters brought Dumbledore across the Hall and propped him in front of the school. There came a muffled shriek from McGonagall before her Death Eater pushed her gag deeper into her mouth.

"Dumbledore..." breathed Harry.

When Voldemort looked behind him Malfoy jumped into action and smothered Harry's actions so swiftly it was as though he had been told it would be the death of him.

"Ah, yes. Harry, you have a soft spot for your dear old headmaster of course, no?" Voldemort cooed, smiling between him and Dumbledore.

If only Harry could see Dumbledore's face, to see the expression on it, to know whether they were safe or doomed. In spite of everything he had seen, of how certain their capture appeared, he felt that the one thing to decide his emotions – whether he had hope or not – was the expression in Dumbledore's face. But he could not see it wrapped in Malfoy's arms as he was.

"I'll bloody kill you, Potter, if you move again!" hissed Malfoy. His voice wobbled and distorted like a vinyl jumping on a record player; Harry had never heard Malfoy sound so terrified.

For a moment Harry heard nothing but footsteps, and he sat in chilling trepidation. Apparently feeling the same way, Malfoy glanced back and saw Voldemort draw nearer. He loosened his hold on Harry, who felt the both of them shaking in their boots.

"Let me see him," commanded Voldemort.

When Malfoy attempted to haul him up to his feet, Voldemort halted him with a dismissive gesture, which Malfoy was only glad to see as he scurried over to his mother without shame. But not before he was transfixed by Voldemort's address to him.

"Young Malfoy... Be in no doubt that for providing us access into the castle your reward will come, and it will be great..." Voldemort slowly unfixed his gaze on Malfoy, letting the boy on his way. Using just his hand, he reared Harry and brought his face to his own. "The Boy Who Lived..."

Voldemort dropped his hand and slowly moved away. And with each step he took away from Harry, Harry's foot took one forward helplessly. Harry stared at the back of the pale head powerlessly, his feet working without need of his volition. Voldemort released whatever power he had over Harry when he stood level with his headmaster, causing Harry to jerk and nearly fall to the floor with the return of his bodily control. He stiffened his legs and stood straight next to Dumbledore.

Voldemort then took a step back as he surveyed Dumbledore, the expression on his face exultant. Beaming evil stood in front of Harry, and he thought he had seen nothing more disgusting. Voldemort whipped around to the rest of the Hall.

"Today I'm victorious against the great Dumbledore! Hogwarts will be mine! There will be no need for a House beyond that of my ancestors – only one shall suffice!" This bellowing hiss swallowed the Great Hall, ringing in the students' ears. Voldemort opened his mouth wide and stuck his tongue out, and by the fire that erupted from there the three other House banners wilted in flames.

"Hermione, we should be dusting them, not reading them?" Harry said.

"I'm only browsing," Hermione replied belatedly while absorbed in a book.

"By this rate we won't finish B by this evening," complained Harry.

"And it's so infuriating that these books don't even need dusting!" said Ron angrily. "They're spick-and-span clean! Argh!"

"Tell me about it," murmured Harry.

"What could he do to us if we didn't, though?" mused Ron. He was working himself up into a fit. He finished a book, pulled out another and swiped a duster once at it before shoving it into its place on the shelf.

"Hm, let me see. Er, maybe the Cruciatus Curse?" suggested Harry wildly.

Both Ron and Hermione snorted.

"What?" Harry asked them.

"He would like to think he's that bad," Ron said, smirking sagely. "Wimps like him don't know how to be really evil. Being mean doesn't count. Please, making us dust books? He's not in the leagues yet, mate."

"Agreed," said Hermione. "Malfoy is nothing more than a schoolyard bully – he's not Death Eater material, you can count on that."

"What makes so you sure?" Harry asked.

Ron and Hermione sighed in an all-knowing way as though they were of one mind. "He's just a nipper at the end of the day, Harry – like the rest of us," replied Hermione. "He's under huge pressure to act the part. Obviously he's going to try to – he's got no choice. You could almost feel sorry for him."

"Pfft I don't," scoffed Ron. "Thinks he can strut around giving orders as if he's not under them himself? Stuff it."

It was easy for Ron and Hermione to say these things, but Harry thought if there was anyone to appraise Malfoy's virtues outside of his own circle, it was him. And though what Ron and Hermione said sounded to ring true, Harry thought he knew another side of Malfoy. A side of him that was deeply desirous of proving himself to anyone in a position higher than his own. It could be at times soft-handed and deft and at others cruel. They all had seen it whenever Malfoy had been around his Head of House. Harry had seen this when Voldemort had walked through the gates of Hogwarts and taken it prisoner.

"Whatever," said Harry. "Just don't be too quick to think you know him."

"Okay, we're not saying we know him, Harry," objected Hermione. "We're just trying to figure him out as we have known him during school."

"Come off it. He's not a complicated bloke to understand," said Ron rather blockishly. "What are you sneering at?" he sneered back at a portrait hanging on the side of a shelf in another aisle.

"I don't see why you even attempt to fathom the Malfoys," sniffed the man in the portrait. He was advanced in age, sported chain spectacles and a white beard upturned on either sides much like that of Phineas Nigellus Black, the patent pointy nose, a long hair starting from a sinister-looking widow's peak and a severe, piercing look about his yellowish eyes. "Our constitution shouldn't be disgraced by the likes of your blunt appraisals. A Weasley, I assume?"

"Well you're certainly not above stereotypes!" retorted Ron. "Not everyone with ginger hair and freckles is a Weasley, bloody hell!"

"Really, Rawlin, why do you bother?" drawled another voice where Harry could not see but sounded to come from a portrait on the side of the shelf on whose books they were working.

"Forgive my impatience, Waldorf," said Rawlin, his nostrils flaring down at Ron as though he were something he would find on the seat of a toilet. "I couldn't let him sit there as he tried to put observations on this family with his simpleton mind. Honestly. If we're going to be judged at least let it be by someone worthy."

"You stuck-up little frock!" Ron roared. "I can't believe this. Is the entire Malfoy family as arrogant as Malfoy? I have to be _qualified_ to judge you?"

"Let's move away," muttered Hermione.

"Let's," agreed Harry. The both of them put the books away and pushed Ron down the row into another aisle. As they moved they heard one of the portraits speak again.

"I smell something," harrumphed Waldorf.

"Mudblood, no doubt," Rawlin spat.

Hermione shook her head but said nothing. They dropped to their knees and began afresh on a new section of books beginning with the letter A.

"That wasn't exactly surprising," Harry said. Ron grunted in assent. "Not surprising but definitely uncalled for."

"I think today's the day I'm justified in hating every single bloody Malfoy that ever lived," Ron declared.

"But they can't all be that bad," argued Harry. "Look at Malfoy's mother."

"Technically, being a woman she's not a Malfoy," Hermione pointed out. "Unless she's Lucius' sister, which would be disgusting."

"Don't listen to them, Hermione," soothed Ron. "They're just rotting bigots now... Oi, shouldn't-"

_POP!_

"-Tibby be coming round right about now...?"

"Tibby is to tell the slaves it is time for lunch," announced Tibby as she stood in the aisle among them.

"No need telling me twice!" enthused Ron, hauling himself up to his feet and stretching. "Onward."

The fact that they did not see Malfoy often except during a meal and that he controlled their movements through Tibby made him seem a remote and unsettling enigma. Hence a meal was starting to become something of an event. They found Malfoy and his mother engaged in light conversation over their lunch. They seemed to have been waiting for their arrival because their plates were full. Malfoy's glare from the other end of the room told Harry it was his mother who had insisted they wait for the slaves.

And this was what characterized Malfoy's nature as Harry knew it since the moment Harry met him, and that which made it impossible for anyone – let alone Ron and Hermione – to think they knew of what he was capable: Malfoy oscillated – he built and broke himself constantly. This was just another example. While his absence made him appear mature, mysterious, threatening and strangely ubiquitous, his childish actions such as glaring at them because he had to wait for them reduced him and made him seem… fathomable… rather like them… typical… certainly someone lesser to the Lord of the Manor. It reminded Harry of his old school days when things had been normal. Relatively.

Malfoy simply glanced at the wall and the three slaves knew where to head; Harry's feet even started moving almost by themselves. They sat down in front of a wall and waited for their meal. Meanwhile they could hear the conversation behind them.

"I'll be visiting Ruth after this. You remember Ruth, don't you? I was used to dragging you to her house showing you off. She'll never forget you, especially after that little cute song and dance you performed for her."

"Mother!" they heard Malfoy grumble as Narcissa laughed softly.

There was a snap of fingers and in front of them appeared a delicious lunch. Harry, Ron and Hermione tucked in.

Malfoy's mother's visit to her friend was the first but certainly not the last. When Harry and his friends returned to their rooms she could be seen standing quietly in the foyer and staring through the open doors of the manor, perhaps over the hedges and capering white peacocks to the black gates far ahead. Nevertheless, after a few minutes of what seemed internal prayer, she crossed the floor over to that unsightly shower stall-like walled chamber on the right. Whatever it was, Harry knew that Malfoy's mother never returned whenever she entered it. He thought perhaps she was simply visiting more and more friends on a social call, or perhaps she was trying to forget Snape's visit and what he had told her.

And with these passing days and his mother's increasing absence from the manor, Malfoy's appearances grew scarcer. There was eventually no need to take meals in the dining room, and Malfoy withdrew himself to parts of the manor Harry could not see or to which slaves had no access. Malfoy became a discomforting enigma all over again. Furthermore, the tasks given them turned increasingly demanding; soon Tibby had to replace or clean their robes nightly after a day's toil. And what was more infuriating than anything else was that their hard work was not necessary: the garden could not have looked any better than it had before they touched it.

"I'm a bleedin' garden boy at home, I'm a bleedin' garden boy here!" moped Ron. "At least no feisty gnomes..."

The floor could not have looked more sparkling.

"There must be an army of elves living around here somewhere to do this, maybe hundreds of them!" fumed Ron.

"Doing hard labour ill-fitted for their capabilities!" seethed Hermione.

And the books in the library were "as spotless as McGonagall's celibacy record" according to Ron, which Hermione shout, but not without an unsuccessful fight with her widening grin, "Ron, that's your teacher!"

"Was," muttered Ron.

Malfoy growing lonelier with his mother's lengthening social sojourns was only natural and expected. What Harry had not expected was the summon to his room. Harry hardly thought he could cheer the boy up. Tibby had appeared and stuck her small hand out for him to grasp while they sat on Harry's bed. They had been warned not to congregate in any one slave's room but they had grown less fearful of a remote master whose surprise visits had grown increasingly improbable as more days passed. Before Tibby's arrival Hermione had been in the middle of another one of her fits in which he depreciated them for their lack of knowledge on what was happening beyond the walls of the mansion.

"We're at a point where we have to guess what the date is!" she had seethed in frustration.

After Tibby told Harry that he was being expected, the raven-haired boy looked at his friends uncertainly. The fact that they had heard nothing from Malfoy for the past two weeks made the sudden request for his presence very perturbing indeed.

"Good luck," wished Hermione, looking powerless.

"Kick him in the teeth for me," said Ron. Harry thought the redhead predicted he and Malfoy were going to get into a brawl as had been very probable back in the Hogwarts days.

"Ron," chided Hermione.

Harry sighed. "Yeah, see you later." He took Tibby by the hand and the next thing he felt his body being squeezed from both sides and his lungs compressed until he felt he was going to suffocate to death. But the iron bands burst free and air slammed into his lungs. He took a few seconds to gather his bearings and catch his breath, panting in front of a four-poster bed with a silk emerald duvet and curtains and pillows of Slytherin green and silver. Malfoy reclined on the bed with a magazine in his hand.

Harry's eyes whizzed around the room and took in a writing desk, a dressing table, a chest of drawers and a large wardrobe on both of whose sides stood two doors. The room was a replica of his own except that it was slightly, if he could imagine it, bigger.

"You wanted me?" Harry prompted the boy lying in the bed.

Malfoy put down the magazine.

"Potter."

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	6. Aftermath

**Chapter 7  
**

**Aftermath**

"I need a nail cut," Malfoy told him. He wore a silk navy blue top and pants and grey satin secret socks.

Harry stared at him.

Malfoy slipped his sock off his foot and raised it under Harry's nose.

"I need you to cut my nails."

Harry stared at Malfoy still, the question hanging temptingly on his lips.

"Because I have you so I don't have to do it myself," said Malfoy, answering Harry's unspoken question. Yet all Harry heard was _I'm lonely and I'm using this as an excuse._

Harry moved his eyes from Malfoy's innocently expectant face to his foot, pale, long, sculpted, and in want of a single nail.

"But you don't have any nails," Harry observed.

"There are little bits of them if you look hard enough," replied Malfoy. "Sit there on your knees and take them off."

Harry's heartbeat had suddenly picked up. The indignity of getting on his knees to cut off his master's… his master's… to cut of Malfoy's non-existent nails… Funny how such small things felt so damaging to his pride.

He let out a sharp breath. "Fine," he ground out. "Where's the nail clipper?"

Malfoy raised his eyebrows slowly, and there grew a predatory sort of smile on his face. An inkling occurred to Harry.

"With your teeth."

"Fuck that."

The words came out fast and furious, spontaneously and without his permission. Yet in high heat he didn't regret them, and his next words were every bit deliberate.

"I'm not gonna do that! Call Tibby to do it for you, for fuck's sakes!"

Malfoy watched him for a few seconds.

"Potter, you're going to go down on your knees…"

As he said the words, Harry felt his roaring flame of outrage splutter and choke, ebb and burn lower and dimmer, and stifled out completely.

"…And you're going to bite my toenails off, one by one."

The pathetic wisps of smoke left of the flame were his pathetic wishes to get it over and done with. He could do it – he just didn't have to accept he was doing it.

"Then don't blame me if I bite you 'cos you've got no nails to bite."

"Blame will be the last thing on my mind, Potter, and yes I'm threatening you; I can do whatever I want with you."

Being threatened and knowing he couldn't do anything about it was a far more bearable ignominy. Nevertheless, pulling his lips inside with a face of concentration, Harry felt his knees bend and touch the soft mink carpet. He took the proffered foot by the ankle, neared his face to it, swallowed, suppressed his flaring nostrils, opened his mouth, and tried to take purchase of the stump of Malfoy's big toe.

His indignity and mortification didn't allow him to look up and so resulted in diligence as he went about biting Malfoy's toenails off. Unluckily, the fact that the nail on Malfoy's big toe was almost non-existent, he had to really put his mouth in it to get that small little hair's width of nail.

"There you go, like a good little slave boy…" purred Malfoy, picking up his magazine. "Don't stop."

Harry had done so to wipe the drool of his chin and redeploy his mouth on the wet toes.

"And don't hurt me or I will make you work out there in the dark in a flash."

Harry reflexively said something, but it came out as a hum around Malfoy's foot, which jerked slightly.

"What was that?" Malfoy asked. He seemed, with all the power between the both of them, ready for a challenge.

"Nothing," Harry replied, after pulling a toe out to speak.

"Good. Back to work."

The blackened earth from where those smoking wisps issued burned hot red again, and a flame leaped.

"Ouch!"

The foot in front of his face jerked back and kicked his nose; Harry's eyes started smarting.

"I said don't hurt me!"

The foot kicked again at his face, connecting, in addition, with his teeth. On the other side of Ron's words, the flame roared ferociously until its heat was all his vision, and Harry saw red. The room blurred into a dark brown haze as he leapt off the carpet, scrabbled up Malfoy's leg like a rat, and lunged into him. The first casualty was the magazine as it flew aside, pages flailing, then Harry's glasses, then Harry's groin as Malfoy's leg drew up and his foot kicked at his nether region, but then it was Malfoy's face as Harry – retaining some mind not to close his fists – slapped away at it until it morphed from pale to pink in a matter of seconds.

"Stop! Stop! POTTER, STOP IT!"

Harry froze, hands in the air, chest heaving up and down.

Malfoy took a second to peek at him out of his protective cage of limbs, hardly the sight of a slave master. He grabbed his wand off the top of his bedside drawer as quickly as a fox and pointed it into his face.

"Get off me."

Harry slowly retreated and climbed off the bed.

Draco blew a lock of hair from his face and sat up without losing an eye on Harry.

"How dare you attack your master! I should have you manacled and whipped!"

Harry just stared at him blankly, but a remnant of his fury was betrayed by the slightest swell of his nostrils and the slightest scrunch of his lips.

"Get on your knees now."

Harry's knees bent and he folded his legs under him, fighting the temptation to cross his arms, a suggestion of defiance.

Malfoy slowly took back his magazine, but then with a face of disgust wiped his wet foot dry by rubbing it against the bedspread.

Minutes past filled with the snap of every page turned by Malfoy. Harry felt his legs cramping and shifted. He didn't miss the eye slyly sliding onto him.

"Don't move."

Harry looked away and towards the soft rolling embers of the fireplace; he cursed inside at his new awareness of the slight chill in the room, which, however, still didn't warrant the socks and pyjama pants Malfoy wore. Still, the small chill made his scrotum pull up his to body and the hairs on the back of his neck to rise.

Malfoy threw the magazine aside, yawned, and stretched, looking like a white lion cub roaring in silence. He looked aside at Harry, who continued staring at the fireplace as though his life depended on appearing unmoved by any action of Malfoy's. He knew if he caught Malfoy's eye he would have to keep it, for his pride wouldn't allow him to look elsewhere in what he thought would be a defeat in the battle of wills. Consequently Harry didn't know definitively if Malfoy was looking directly at him or something behind him. He didn't care either way.

"Come here," Malfoy ordered.

Harry stood up and approached the bed. Malfoy seemed much calmer now.

"Nightmares are so taxing," he sighed, before giving another wide yawn. "I'm tired of waking up weak-kneed. Wake me up if you see me struggling to move…"

Without seeking a nod, a hum of agreement, or any other gesture of compliance Malfoy pulled himself up, dragged the duvet over his shoulder, and turned his back to Harry.

When Malfoy closed his eyes Harry finally clutched at his nose and wiggled it. That was a mean kick it suffered, two of them. The room seemed to open up with Harry's return of freedom. He looked around the room more critically, knowing there was no consequence, no silver-eyed gaze, and turned around.

He realized that it was probable Malfoy had been staring at the window in front of which he had sat. He hadn't seen it when he had arrived in the room, which only corroborated its dubious apparentness. But he was pretty sure they were closer to the heart of the manor than to any side of it, and so the presence of a window would be impossible. Harry contemplated the possibility of a magical window, set to reflect the passing of the day outside with rising and falling turns of the sun.

He spun around back and spied some sheets of parchment, a quill, and a few piles of books on the escritoire. He turned his eye on the magazine Malfoy had been reading. Before daring to grab it, he sneaked up and loomed over the body to peer at Malfoy's face: his eyes were wide shut, and they had that swollen, upturned, and soft-smiling appearance about them that told Harry Malfoy was already floating on clouds in the land of slumber. He felt it safe to take the magazine off the bed, flip it over to the front cover, and read the title _The Connoisseur's Construct_. He found the date atop a series of number: it was dated 15th December. At least he would head back and assuage Hermione's disquiet with some kind of perspective of time.

Harry almost said to himself Malfoy honestly didn't think he would just stand there and look over him while he slept, but then he realized Malfoy probably expected exactly that from him. Well, Harry thought, Malfoy wouldn't see him, so he sat down slowly and cautiously on the little slice of bed on this side of Malfoy, just next to his head, and soundlessly opened the magazine.

He read enough from the first few pages to find that the magazine was not in his taste. In fact the tastes the magazine aimed to satisfy were high and out of touch with the rest of the world; it must have been a magazine rotating around the few aristocratic families in Wizarding Britain. The small circulation and exclusivity of the magazine spoke in the thick and high gloss pages, several rungs above even those of the Muggle version, and certainly those of the _Witch Weekly_ and _Which Broomstick_ magazines, and the uppish and slanted cursive writing with so many flourishes on some pages it looked like a floral pattern.

Calling heavily upon his more daring side, Harry slowly rose off the bed and padded over to the escritoire, on which he, at least for a moment, spied the elegant cursive penmanship of Malfoy conveying, amongst other things, his reflections on his visit to Hogwarts, that of Snape to the manor, just how he intended to carefully groom his charges, and another parchment detailing the extent of his lack of enthusiasm for his upcoming birthday on the—before he heard a small noise behind him.

He whipped around and scuttled around the bed, standing where he had been moments before, looming over Malfoy. Since he had tucked his face just slightly into himself, Harry couldn't see it, so he walked around towards the other side of the bed and sat, watching the partially shadowed face of his master. Malfoy didn't look in the slightest bit disturbed, no part of him in a new place; he must have just sighed in his sleep.

But then Harry noticed Malfoy's upturned hand twitch. Malfoy then made a sound one made when pushing a load or exerting oneself in another way, that sound of air rushing through one's nostrils before getting ready to give another push of effort. Malfoy made a second noise like this. Either this or his nose was blocked and he was trying to force-breathe his occlusive mucus out. Nevertheless Harry remained where he was, relishing in the fact that he was justified either way of his inaction: he wasn't sure what Malfoy was doing so he couldn't just disturb him in his sleep, and if he was struggling against something, given it could only be a mere dream it wouldn't hurt to let him struggle just a little longer…

Malfoy gave another forced exhalation. There was now something decidedly rigid about his body. Harry only gave a gesture of aid when Malfoy's brow started crinkling: Harry walked on all fours on the bed over to him and shook his arm.

"Malfoy."

Malfoy's hand jerked away from his body again; he was definitely struggling against something.

"Malfoy," said Harry, shaking harder on the arm before Malfoy nearly catapulted off the bed, hair flying. His squinting eyes caught the sight of Harry. He lowered himself back on the bed, beginning to ramble incoherently.

"A green snake with black spots… it had a—like—big fly in its mouth. It was here next to me, with the big fly in its mouth… But the bug moved… moved to my neck and then the snake went for it and got my neck and got it against my neck too. I tried to fling the snake away from me but I didn't have the strength to – it was still next to me and I don't know if it wanted to attack me now that I pissed it off… But it was still biting at my neck on the fly… Don't know if it was trying to bite me or getting to the fly..."

"Gripping," harrumphed Harry.

Malfoy was in no condition to receive his attitude, so it didn't surprise him when he laid his head down on his pillow, looking exhausted as though he had been fighting for hours on end with an invisible force.

"Someone's bewitching me, somewhere..." Malfoy breathed, his chest rising and falling deeply. "It's always a sign..."

_With all the people you __must have pissed off you shouldn't be surprised. _Harry began pushing himself off the bed.

"Wait."

Harry stopped and looked aside with half an eye at Malfoy.

"Stay here. Wake me up again if... if you have to..."

Malfoy rolled over and pulled the covers over his shoulder once more.

***0***

Harry had never heard of people having nightmares when they were being bewitched before. But he could relate to the phenomenon of suffering nightmares simultaneously in accordance with something happening remotely from him in the form of his visions through Voldemort's eyes. Hence he could afford a sliver of empathy for Malfoy in the face of at least one of his friends' vengeful satisfaction at Malfoy's plight when he told them about it the next day in his room just after lunch.

"Ha! Serves him right!" rejoiced Ron. "I guess slave masters aren't immune to nightmares apart from bloated egos."

"I'm a bit ashamed to admit I know a little about this," muttered Hermione. "I think he had an Incubus. I was reading about it—reading about it…" She faltered at the judgemental stares Harry and Ron were levelling at her. "...in this other book about all sorts of acts and ways to attack a person without even touching them. Spookiest book I ever read..."

Harry and Ron kept staring at her.

"Well you might as well go on, seeing as you're on a roll," said Ron, arms folded a little imperiously, intentionally looking exceedingly naive.

"Well," hedged Hermione uncertainly. "You can imagine the book's contents page. Spell circle ceremony, reverse inflictive necromancy, voodoo, dream fiends, urgh..." She shivered. "Disgusting and evil really."

"Yet you stomached it," lilted Ron, his nose just a little higher than what Hermione would like, Harry was sure. "Go on."

"Well," she said bitingly, casting Ron a dirty look. "I think what you described about Malfoy, Harry, is an Incubus, one of the many dream fiends a Dark Arts practitioner can use to hurt or frighten someone without having to be near him. But of course it could also just mean it was just a nightmare like any other we experience, at least what Muggles experience. It might simply mean his bad deeds are catching up to him, in for a little comeuppance."

"Doubt it," said Harry shortly. "In this day and age? After what's happened? Dark magic is floating around everywhere like no one's business, even in the Muggle world; it's Voldemort's playground, and he's the one with the biggest stick. It's his era now."

"So what does this Incubus thing do?" Ron asked.

"I read that when it comes to you it feels like there's a weight on your chest, you can hardly move, and almost struggle to breathe. You're in a continuous struggle while having horrific visions of some sort. So when you wake up you feel like you just ran a mile."

"Malfoy did say he felt weak," recalled Harry. "So that must be it. But, really, I've had these kinds of nightmares before. Cant' they just be normal nightmares you get once in a while?"

"Er, I can't say I remember having a nightmare that weighed on my chest and made me wake up all jelly-boned," said Ron.

"Me neither," said Hermione. She sighed at Harry sympathetically. "It's only fitting you and Malfoy have had them, I guess. But I do get you on that part; that book described a lot of things that are common experiences probably felt by a lot of people and made them into symptoms of some other person working against you."

This talk about people able to harm one remotely was exceptionally alarming to Harry... If something was going to harm him, at least he should be able to see it, so in a way he could cope with it... Then he suddenly recalled that chill in Malfoy's room that made his scrotum harden and his hackles to stand up... Something had been in that room...

"Let's change topic, can't we?" suggested Harry, with a slight shiver. He had decided to keep his little tussle with Malfoy and the kick to his teeth private.

"Let's," said Ron, arms still folded. "So then what happened after you woke him up? Did you watch him sleep for the whole night?"

"Of course not," said Harry.

"Dozed off a little?" Ron enquired.

"Naturally," answered Harry.

"Did you sleep on the carpet or on the bed?" asked Hermione, who must have felt relieved the spotlight was off her and on Harry.

"Er, on the bed, in case he started struggling again...?" said Harry.

"Taking good care of your good ol' master. A model slave," observed Ron, nodding appreciatively.

Harry gave Ron a "Are you serious?" look as he and Hermione nodded. They exchanged a glance which Harry caught but unbeknownst to him that their seeming partnership to unsettle Harry was a way of diverting attention away from something else. But Harry was thrown a lifeline when Ron's eyes lowered to the collar around Hermione's neck, which, Harry could observe himself, elongated her neck attractively and its silver polish complemented the dazzle of her hazelnut eyes... Harry blinked several times, turned away to Ron, and smirked.

How fast the tables turn. When Ron noticed his smirk his face fell before he looked away hastily.

"Can't believe I'm saying I miss those Phiggles and Giffies already," he announced, more to fill the awkward silence than anything.

Having gained an advantage, Harry now brimmed with so much confidence he delved back into the matter of his stay in Malfoy's private quarters.

"I read some shifty stuff Malfoy wrote about yesterday."

"What's this?" asked Hermione. She spoke a little too readily, brow furrowed in unfounded concentration.

"Wrote something about grooming us and how he was not really looking forward to his birthday and about what Snape said when he came here."

"Serves him right again," announced Ron. "Why should he enjoy any of his birthdays considering he's the thickest, greenest scum on this earth?"

"Well his parents don't think so," Harry said. "Parent, to correct myself."

"And that parent didn't spend the night here," Hermione added.

Malfoy's mother had strutted into the dining room while they were having breakfast, the shoulders of her scarlet trench coat covered in snow, which was a strange sight considering at least yesterday there hadn't been a trace of a snowflake anywhere outside when they had been there. Harry had guessed there was some anti-snow charm in addition to the anti-Muggle charm around the manor. Putting that together with the fireplace that was lit in Malfoy's room yesterday, he gathered Malfoy wasn't too fond of the cold, so snow certainly wouldn't be one of his favourite things either.

_POP!_

"Master Malfoy has ordered the slaves to tend to the animals in the stables," announced Tibby.

They each played their part as they sighed despairingly as though grooming and feeding the Phiggles and Giffies weren't one of the highlights of their day, apart from the three meals and daily showers. They dragged their feet and dropped their shoulders as they followed Tibby out into the morning air once more.

Tibby left them only after Harry and Ron grabbed some brushes and began running them across the flanks of the Giffies and Hermione combed the Phiggles' manes.

"...I hope Colin and Dennis are doing just light work, if you know what I mean," Ron was saying minutes later, as they all settled into a comfortable lull grooming the animals. "And I wonder what Neville's doing."

"I think I saw Colin and Dennis in the Great Hall," replied Hermione, "doing—well—stuff on the table – they weren't sold off. I don't know about Neville, though. He was sold, one thing for sure. Hopefully his master sees that he's—I mean thinks he's as useless as he is in Potions."

"You don't have to be useful being raped – you just have to lay there like a dead fish," Ron laughed, but later realized the exact nature of his humour; he looked over at Harry and Hermione apologetically. "He was taken by Wormtail, wasn't he?" he then asked, trying to change the subject and win back favour no doubt

"I know!" said Harry crossly, dragging his brush across his Giffy a little too roughly, at which it neighed threateningly and swished its tail, nearly slapping his face (it was a long tail). "And the way they handed Neville to him, like Lucius was doing him a big favour, giving him the 'nastiest' of the prizes."

"Shallow," agreed Hermione, pursing her lips. "Just because Neville didn't fit the bill – at least most of it – they gave him to the most disgusting piece of life I've ever seen on this earth. Why didn't they just leave him behind if he wasn't good enough for, say, Lucius Malfoy?"

"The prick obviously wanted the hottest slave – or slaves – to himself," sneered Ron. "Probably took that chick I forgot her name... Giselle, isn't it? Yeah, her and that Leigh Rowling girl too."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. Ron blushed when he saw her face.

"What? Harry thinks they're hot too! The whole bloody school does! She's the hottest skirt in Hogwarts, ain't she? I bet if the school had a poll they would come out tops; it's not just me! Ask Harry!"

Hermione turned to Harry, who raised his eyebrows at Ron quizzically.

"Mate, I swear..." said Ron in disbelief.

"I don't think Lucius took any slaves for himself," Hermione said finally.

By the look of desperation in Ron's eyes he seemed to figure that this incident was not going to be forgotten soon, much of it thanks to Harry, who did think Giselle Preston and Leigh Rowling were two of the prettiest girls in Hogwarts.

"Why not?" Harry asked her, with an innocent little lilt that infuriated Ron, who turned back to brushing his Giffy. It kicked him in the air and dropped him several feet away.

"Even though we three were first to head to the dungeons and didn't see much of what happened, Lucius probably thought himself above all of that chaos," answered Hermione. Ron picked himself from the floor, cursing busily. "And he does have a wife waiting at home to satisfy him every which way."

"I think he would've still done it, just to show us he could," countered Harry. "And Lucius was sicker than you give him credit for. Think he's a warm fuzzy family man, do you?"

"What do you reckon about Parvati and Lavender, though?" asked Ron, returning to the fray with brush in hand. "And Dean and Seamus?"

"Well, um..." mumbled Hermione nervously.

"Wait?" said Ron.

Hermione cringed as though she were waiting for a volcano to erupt.

"I think I saw Dean having sex with Ginny."

There was a moment of silence.

"It wasn't Ginny, it was Parvati," Ron said, frowning at her.

Hermione's mouth dropped. She quickly turned to Harry for confirmation. Harry shrugged his shoulders – he didn't know; on the day they were taken by Malfoy he must have been lost in thought because he recalled the absence of cheerful noise as they approached the Great Hall, but then the next moment he felt sunlight on his skin as they exited the Entrance Hall and stepped onto the grounds.

Hermione flushed. She seemed to be in disbelief of herself. Ron certainly was.

"You've got to let this Dean slash Ginny thing go, Hermione," he advised solemnly.

"I—I'm not making this up!" said Hermione, even as her eyes darted left and right as she tried to recall more clearly. "It was Ginny on the table and Dean was on top of her and..."

"But Parvati hasn't got anything close to red hair," argued Harry, slightly worried about Hermione.

"Hermione wanted Dean and Ginny to be a couple," Ron told him, rolling his eyes. "And I told her it's never going to happen. If there's any bloke going to date my little sister... you know..." He trailed off, looking away from them but eyeing Harry at the corner of his eye.

"I've seen them kiss, all right!" said Hermione. Harry sensed it was her final swipe at the air before falling to the ring floor. "It's just you won't believe me! Obviously Ginny wasn't going to tell you she was dating Dean – you're her older brother; she probably thought you'd freak out, and you would have."

"Ha," sighed Ron. "Just leave her, Harry. She just won't get over it."

"Okay, okay," said Harry, interrupting Hermione before she launched into another justification of her case. "How about all the others? What happened to them? Where did they take them? Lavender, Parvati's sister, Justin, the teachers?"

They looked at each other, and they must have each recalled the same moment nearly two months ago.

Voldemort's pale face glowed magnificently with happiness and the flames engulfing the banners of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw House.

"Take him and his staff down to the dungeons," ordered Voldemort.

The Death Brothers' eyes bounced around each other in seeming confusion.

"My Lord," said Lucius, his expression cautious yet incredulous, "I don't think there're dungeons under Hogwarts."

Voldemort stared at him. "Then you clearly don't know it as well as I do. But ordinarily you're not expected to know the home you're visiting off by heart, are you? But if you yourself live there, regard it as a home of your own, you are expected to know it off by heart naturally. Hogwarts was and is my home the moment I laid my foot upon it. I knew it was where I truly belonged, not where I had lived before. So I would take my word, Lucius, that when I say there are dungeons under this castle, there are dungeons under this castle, Lucius. I've traipsed the halls of this castle longer than Draco here has walked his entire young life."

"Of course, My Lord," stuttered Lucius breathily, bowing his head. "Your omniscience doesn't surprise us."

Harry rather thought Lucius wanted to turn the conversation away from his son, whose eyes, Harry saw, widened when his name passed Voldemort's lips, perhaps feeling a twisted sense of honour, or simply terror.

Voldemort looked up at Lucius' words, turned to Dumbledore, and smiled at him.

"Perhaps more omniscient than Dumbledore?" he suggested, addressing no one in particular.

"In leaps and bounds, My Lord," scoffed Lucius, "in leaps and bounds."

However many negative things Harry felt about Lucius, he struck Harry as a proud and carefully measured person in every way (if selectively conscientious), but in his master's presence Lucius transformed and seemed to have absolutely no idea that he was coming across as so unabashed and sickeningly sycophantic Harry thought Voldemort should punish him for excess.

"Just as the Founders of Hogwarts were oblivious to the existence of Salazar's Chamber of Secrets, so they were blissfully unaware of his dungeons. We should all strive to duplicate his nature of secrecy..." Voldemort's eyes slowly found Snape. "You will find the entrance to the dungeons as a Glamoured wall between the two rows of stalls in the bathroom of the lowest and deepest level where the seventh years board. If you don't feel confident in your navigation skills I suggest you beg Severus escort you. I'm also sure he would appreciate a private and final moment with his headmaster."

Dumbledore's silver hair and beard, now a golden blond in the roaring inferno of the flames, whirled about as he turned to the Death Eaters beside him, his eyes wide and fastened on one.

"Severus," he whispered, in a voice so stabbed and fraught with the pain of betrayal it came out a shredded stutter. But not enough to move Snape as he stared back at Dumbledore colourlessly with those dead black pits as if beyond dispassion and unfamiliar to the emotion that was guilt. He moved past Dumbledore, his black robes brushing the headmaster.

"Follow me," Snape commanded the three Death Brothers restraining Dumbledore. They crossed the length of the Great Hall just as the other Death Brothers with holds on the teachers began filing out to join them out of the Hall.

"Leave him alone!" shouted Harry, as he leapt for the Death Brothers. But Lucius caught him with a spell that hooked his ankle and yanked him upside down until his arms swung and his hair hung in the air. Snape's temple throbbed and his skin seemed momentarily sallower as he exited the Hall.

"Draco," urged Lucius.

Malfoy sprung from his mother's lap and rushed over to Harry, whom he grabbed out of the air, tumbled with to the floor, and wrestled, and then subdued with his wand trained into the hollow of his throat.

"What to do with the children...?" Voldemort asked Lucius, as he swept his scarlet gaze across the four tables. "Those most helpless and deepest scarred by the doctrines of good and bad force-fed to them ever since they could burble sounds. So passionately fought for, defended for by foolish sacrifices in the hope of their survival. For what? To turn into adults ready to deceive the next generation? They must head to the dungeons as well."

"My Lord," inserted Lucius, casting a swift glance at a Death Eater standing at the wall who looked built much bigger and grislier than any other around him, "perhaps the children could be put to use instead of idling in a cage, which I'm sure they'd enjoy."

Voldemort paused for a moment, then turned to the same Death Eater at whom Lucius had glanced.

"Fenrir, I've already warned you against your predilection for young meat," said Voldemort, fixing his slit eyes upon Fenrir Greyback. "Did Severus not warn you on my behalf when you tried to... approach Draco?"

Lucius moved suddenly. He stared at Voldemort as if Voldemort's hissing voice had bound him. For the first time that evening Narcissa Malfoy appeared alive as her dipped head rose and she looked up, but she didn't look in the direction of Voldemort. She looked over her shoulder at her son, asking questions with her eyes. Looming over Harry, Malfoy swallowed nervously, barely braving to glance in Fenrir's direction.

"You'll need to curb your craving for the young ones until the full moon when it's useful," Voldemort said. "Otherwise merely feeding on them and casting them aside is a wasteful thing. But perhaps there's something in the idea of putting the children to some kind of use as you suggest, Lucius."

Lucius recovered himself swiftly. "Some of our own have expressed to me their desires to keep some of the children," he said. His voice and appearance altogether was now distinctly detached.

Voldemort looked around the Great Hall at his Death Eaters and Death Brothers. "I suppose they could see it as a reward..."

Many of the Death Eaters and Brothers nodded and hummed and mumbled in agreement.

"Merely serving me perhaps doesn't suffice as a reward in and of itself any longer..."

The nodding now turned horizontal as the followers shook their heads and muttered in desperate and fervent disagreement.

Voldemort blinked around him quietly.

"My Lord, that is not at all the case," pleaded Lucius. "At least for myself."

"In absence of ambition I don't doubt you, Lucius, unlike the rest-" said Voldemort.

"My Lord," began Wormtail, cowering and cringing towards Voldemort, who turned to him and arrested him with his glare, at which point Wormtail moaned, "-I assure you..." but melted to the ground in fear.

"Perhaps I should consider granting you your own slaves," continued Voldemort, as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Your desires are no surprise to me, for most of you haven't seen the bare bosom of a woman in your life; you'd take anything thrown your way, including that of a child.

"Most of you here are Death Brothers – fresh recruits called upon for my grander cause by my second and third in command, Severus and Lucius. You're young men looking to prove yourself, to commit yourself blindly to any cause, really, because you're naive and desperate to belong to something bigger than yourselves. And being young men naturally you have flaming desires, a young passion you're seeking to sate. Hence you wish to be given these students for yourself, students from a school you most probably graduated from only a few years earlier.

"And my older Death Eaters, Salazar help you, I thought I was the wickedest in chief here, but you impress me! Damn me for trying to appear judgemental. Claim your prizes. Incidentally, are you interested in taking in a slave as well, Lucius?"

"There are a few I'm keeping an eye on," replied Lucius, who was first to recover from Voldemort's change in disposition. He cast his gaze around the Hall musingly, browsing.

"Make it quick," said Voldemort. "Make the slaves and throw the rest in the dungeons. Lucius, you have your orders."

The shift in mood in the Great Hall was so sudden the Death Eaters and Brothers at first didn't know how to react to it as Voldemort strode to the doors. But then they broke out in lustful cheer and leers at the students sitting on the table.

"We should start with Gryffindor, that should be fitting," said Lucius breezily, as if breathing a little easier now that Voldemort was absent. "I needn't say Slytherin House is of course exempt."

"My paws are on Potter!" squealed Bellatrix delightedly. She came over to Malfoy and Harry. "Would love to get me some Boy Wonder... But now how about a Mudblood?" she exclaimed suddenly, and she left them and pranced over to Gryffindor table. "I'll teach this Mudblood something for daring to drag her gutter-blood arse into our world in the first place!"

"Don't call her that!" said Ron, shooting up to his feet.

"Don't call her what?" asked Bellatrix, as Ron fell and began writhing on the floor under her curse.

"Bella, if you'll finish your little amusement there," drawled Lucius. "I can't hold an auction while there's someone screaming at the top of his lungs."

Bellatrix threw him a dirty look but moved away from Ron together with her spell.

"Now, fellow Death Eaters," proclaimed Lucius, "as you know I have absolutely no need of your money, I have enough of it myself, but I simply cannot let this opportunity to make more go to waste, can I? Otherwise, I'll accept satisfactory magical artefacts. And in any case, this will ensure an orderly and peaceful exchange of goods. Let's all try to be on our best behaviour, shall we?"

The ensuing chaos could hardly be called good let alone their best behaviour. Or perhaps it was. The auction would begin and end rowdily. Lucius and his son and wife hadn't stayed for long, perhaps the patriarch thinking them above such crass occasions as Hermione conjectured, or perhaps there had been more to his soft cough before taking off than merely clearing his throat.

Those the Death Eaters viewed as the most useful-looking or attractive were snatched up while the rest were thrown into the cages. Because there were more than enough students to go around, most of them stayed at Hogwarts while some went to their masters' homes straight afterwards. But even so, those who were locked up in the dungeons under the dungeons eventually found their new homes when more Death Brothers availed themselves to taking in a few slaves, picking the leftovers of the Death Eaters, their superiors, who had taken the cream of the crop.

Friends were torn. More tragically, family – sisters, brothers, twins – were broken apart for the mere fun of it: Parvati Patil was first to be taken before another Death Brother took her sister Padma Patil weeks later. Colin and Dennis Creevey were no exception, but mercifully such were Fred and George. Furthermore, those who still remained after every Death Brother had contented himself with a slave of his own were left to the discretion of the Slytherin students.

Perhaps cajoled into it sometimes, the Slytherin students made them do, amongst other things, perverted sexual acts such as those done on top of the table on the day Harry, Ron, and Hermione were collected by Draco Malfoy. Witnessing these and some of the ignominies and tortures suffered by their fellows, eventually many students defected to Slytherin House and therefore aligned themselves with the Dark side for their own safety and wellbeing rather than be carted off to be slave to a Death Eater or Brother and have to satisfy them any which way.

"I just knew that MacMillian Hufflepuff was going to side with them..." said Harry, nostrils flared in repulsion. "Always had a shifty look in his eyes."

"I'm so in love with his eyes!" squealed Hermione. She bowed and kissed the little Phiggle she had been grooming.

"How do you even know it's a he?" enquired Ron.

Hermione gave him a "Duh!" look. She pointed as discretely as she could at something under its belly.

Ron ducked to get a better view and then exclaimed, "Bloody hell, Hermione, how do you notice these things?"

Harry burst out laughing and rolled in the hay before Hermione got a chance to answer Ron. Harry did this again six hours later in the library when Ron, sounding genuinely blown away by her eye for spotting things, asked her the question again. But mid-roll and mid-answer Harry and Hermione were stopped by Tibby's words.

"Master Malfoy has summoned the slaves to the sitting room," Tibby declared, after appearing a moment before.

"Sitting room?" queried Hermione, but Tibby, apparently very mindful of her master's words not to be of any help to them, started walking out of the stable without a second glance at Hermione.

"What do you think it's about?" Harry asked, as they followed Tibby into the manor.

"Wish I'd know already," said Ron, his tone nervous.

"Do you think this is what Malfoy was talking about?" said Harry. "You know, on the first day? Voldemort coming here to – I don't know – check on us and, like, we have to act properly in front of him and his minions?"

He could tell by the silence and lack of answers from his friends that he had alarmed them beyond words.

More frightening, there were some worrying mutters they heard as they neared the dining room. As Tibby led them past it, they stole glimpse from inside it and caught the sight of a few figures in Death Eater robes talking amongst each other. Perhaps some were Death Brothers robes, as the only thing that distinguished them from Death Eaters were their red masks instead of the white ones worn by their superiors.

"What's happening?" whispered Hermione, eyebrow arched in anxiety. "Is it a gathering or something?"

"We'd also like to know but we're as bloody clueless as you are, Hermione!" Ron whispered back angrily.

They took much of their tension out in heated hissing and whispering clashes of opinion before Tibby announced her departure and left them at the opening of the sitting room.

When they entered the sitting room they found their schoolmates in Fred, George, Colin, Dennis, Seamus, Dean, Neville, Parvati, Lavender, Cho Chang, Justin Flinch-Fletchy, Maria Edgecombe, and a few others.


	7. Bitter & Sweet, Fear & Pleasure

**Chapter 8**

**Bitter & Sweet, Fear & Pleasure**

There was a sudden and spectacular clash of red; Harry thought someone nearby had lit off a flare in a sitting room of all places, but then he realized it was the Weasleys rushing to each other and embracing tightly.

Harry was aghast when he saw a naked Parvati slinging towards him. "Harry! Oh my word!" She slammed into him as the rest of his House friends – equally naked – approached him.

"Parvy!" said her friend Lavender incredulously. "He's not your boyfriend, woman – control yourself." She and Hermione hugged for a long while. "You guys, how've you been? We all know Malfoy can be a nasty piece of work."

Parvati smelled awful. Harry was very thankful he and Ron and Hermione hadn't bathed yet; the difference between their body odour and he and his close friends' shampoo scents would have been embarrassingly appreciable. As Harry let go of her, he exchanged a quick glance with Hermione and never recalled feeling so guilty since taking Cedric to the graveyard where he was murdered. At her question, Lavender probably expected tales of an unbearable stay at Malfoy Manor, but they had no such tales to tell (perhaps except for Harry, who had literally endured kissing Malfoy's feet, or foot). Hermione's eyes slowly went up and down Parvati's unclad body, words spilling out her words soundlessly and incredulously.

Parvati reluctantly made room for Dean, Seamus, and Neville to hug Harry, all of whom weren't too kind on the nose either and whom, unlike Harry, weren't to any degree self-conscious about hugging another boy with their penises hanging out.

Cho Chang looked exceedingly awkward crouched cross-legged in a one-seat black leather sofa, opposite her Colin waving wanly together with his brother Dennis on another one-seater which they fit loosely into.

When Harry laid eyes on Colin he expected it to be the cue Colin was waiting for to jump out of his seat and run into his middle as he always used to do, but not before laying a camera lens on Harry.

"Hey, you!" said Harry. He had a sudden thrill, an ugly feeling, as though his memory of who he knew Colin to be was corrupted irrevocably even before they spoke, but Colin's lethargic smile was enough of a tell. All of his former schoolmates wore a thin strip of leather collar around their necks so frayed (but still strong) it looked like bluntly sliced pork meat. But the collars didn't look more wrong and ghastlier than they did around the delicate wrought necks of the little Creevey brothers. Harry forced his smile wider and bent low to put his arms around them.

"How've my favourite brothers been holding up?"

Harry left that conversation feeling short-changed. Colin had answered here and questioned there where appropriate and socially prescribed. But the one day Harry was extremely glad to see him he didn't bother to reciprocate the same level of energy. Harry expected Colin to, as usual, more than match it and rather wear him out.

Harry simply nodded his head in the direction of the less familiar faces of the overweight Marietta Edgecombe and deceivingly sweet, freckled-faced Justin Flinch-Fletchy. Besides, the latter was the boy who had exacerbated the school's suspicion on him in second year after they discovered he was a Parselmouth; and he, even from two metres away, caught a warm, unpleasant smell emanating in waves from the girl next to him, who, incidentally, was the only one dressed besides Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Harry gave Cho a passing and awkward smile but felt relieved he had gotten it out of the way so that it ensured a less uncomfortable interaction between them, which was probably inevitable at some point.

Only when the Weasleys finally let go of each other could Harry hug Fred and George. He nearly asked the obvious question but stopped his tongue just in time, not wishing to cause them unnecessary pain and leaving the matter between family and not intruding friends. Luckily, he knew Ron to be straightforward, sometimes brashly so.

They huddled on the couches around the table. It was taking all Harry had not to stare at the naked girls' nether regions.

"Where's Ginny?" Ron asked, right on cue.

His twin brothers shrugged. "Some Death Brother must've taken her," Fred replied. "I'm guessing the one who has her missed the golden ticket to the meeting."

George said, "We're no less clueless than you – we haven't seen or heard anything from anywhere since this sleeze-fat-ball Rowle bloke came for us."

It was only after the pause at the end of these words that Harry noticed something a little off about Fred: his left eye was lazy, something Harry was sure was new. In fact, when he subtly cast one eye around, something was off with just about everybody in the room: they appeared darker, shrunken, and deflated, perhaps by their dirt and their despair, but Harry wasn't too sure about that. He felt something inside him die a little as he saw in them the reflection of him and Ron and Hermione on the morning they were taken, still served grey gruel and urinating and defaecating on the same floor on which they slept. They were just pieces of sticks attached to a flat square torso and a round head; they were just so thin and gaunt, and hopeless.

How dare he and Ron and Hermione gobble up their three meals a day with ravenous speed? How dare they luxuriate in the warm, loosening steam of their day baths? How dare they savour the cool caress of silk across their skins as they rolled in their beds? How dare they delight in the friendship with the Giffies and the Phiggles? How dare they laugh and roll around in the hay and talk and squeal for joy when they should have been slaves? When their former schoolmates had enjoyed none of it? Why wasn't Malfoy a fouler master?

"What's it been like living with him?" Ron asked. Harry and Hermione kept quiet but curious as though only he had the right to ask questions to his family.

Fred and George dropped their shoulders and gave him expressions that said the answer should be fairly obvious.

"Like hell," George spat. "We took turns being his coffee table."

"And he's nothing less than fond of his new pet," lilted Fred with false cheer, "Sirius the bull."

"He got a bull for a pet?" Hermione blurted out.

"Bull Terrier," corrected Fred. "He likes to keep him howling in satisfaction at all times."

"Well naturally," began Hermione, bewildered, "owners want their—Oh – my – goodness…"

Ron's jaw had gone clattering to the floor with his freckles and all, leaving a bleached expression of horror on his face. His eyes darted to the others listening into their conversation.

Seeing this, George scoffed, "Don't worry, that's probably the least shocking thing to happen to any of us."

"Apart from that, he's a very likeable character though – the dog," sighed Fred. "Shame."

"Shame?" shrieked Hermione. "He's having a Bull Terrier – one of the most feared breeds of dogs ever-"

"He's nothing scary," Fred tossed at her dismissively, even a little offended on the dog's behalf. "He's actually very cute."

"But that mental woman that looked like she hadn't a night's rest in her whole life wanted us," George said, his eyes a little haunted, "wanted us bad. Remember her that day at Hogwarts?"

"Talking about wanting to punish us soundly for simply having red hair and freckles," Fred added. "I don't think she hates us just because we're ginger kids though; she got something against the Weasleys, we're certain of it. Ballistic that one is."

Harry whistled. He turned to the Creevey brothers. He didn't even want to know the answer to the question he had just felt a desire to ask.

"My owner's been very stressed lately," Neville piped up. "He's been taking it out on me." The comfortable insertion of this statement in his steady and measured voice suggested he had planned it carefully and waited for the perfect pause between the others' speech. He then shrunk back into his seat as though it had taken a special effort to be courageous enough to speak up.

"What does he make you do, Neville?" whispered Lavender.

Neville's mouth twisted. Then, avoiding the question, he said, "They talk about Dumbledore a lot – you know – when he visits his friend Death Eaters and makes me come with. They say You-Know-Who's going barmy over it; I mean, freaking out about Dumbledore, and he takes it out on them."

Neville shrunk back again to his original size and stared at his knees. Parvati must have thought someone had to break the tense silence that had suddenly fallen because she turned to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

"So how have you three been holding up here?" Parvati asked, speaking over the noises of clinking glasses and festive chattering from the dining room. "This place is very posh."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione blushed deeply and looked away from Neville at their laps. Comparatively they had nothing short of a fairytale stay here at Malfoy Manor.

"Well, it wasn't too bad," muttered Hermione, as Harry felt wave and wave of heat from his face. Even that was stretching it. It was positively the lightest euphemism she could have used. It wasn't bad at all, thought Harry.

Their former schoolmates blinked at them expectantly.

"I suppose with Lucius gone you got thrown a lifeline," Seamus said, in a rather mournful way, at which point Dean jabbed him with his elbow surreptitiously.

There was another horrible silence in which Harry, Ron, and Hermione squirmed. Someone from the dining room laughed out loudly.

"We've been shovelling manure," Ron said, tossing the words out quickly like a child admitting what he had done and then closing up into a ball protectively as he waited for the imminent punishment. Ron looked down at his feet seemingly urging his former schoolmates to find some measure of horror in his words.

It was the final nail hit right on the head: Lavender reached out and felt the soft silk of Harry's robes, lips pursed. Now more than ever Harry, Ron, and Hermione were aware that they were being looked at accusatorily and resentfully.

"Malfoy isn't as bad as we all thought, I see," Parvati observed.

"It wasn't exactly a ball living here, you know," Ron burst out. "Sure we aren't buggered by dogs but we're still isolated from everyone else; we're still on the side that lost. We've had it no easier than you did."

"Oh please! Shovelling manure?" sneered the hefty girl, Marietta Edgecombe, in a snorty, pig-like voice. "Poor you!"

"Who the fuck are you to say who had it worse than the other?" shouted Ron.

"Can't have been too bad if you're actually wearing something and smelling fresh," said Justin Flinch-Fletchy.

"Shut it, Justin!" screamed Colin. "Leave them alone. None of this is their fault!" They all watched as Colin went over to sat his naked bum in Harry's lap as casually as though Harry were his mother.

"Says Harry Potter's knob-shiner," spat Justin. Colin sprung to his feet, fists ready, but Harry held him.

"Don't, Colin," warned Harry, at which point a frown flickered across Colin's face: either he was flummoxed Harry had commanded him or his name sounded unfamiliar to him. "Guys, are we seriously going to fight like this, over this?"

"Well, Harry," huffed Parvati, her lips trembling from indignation, "forgive us if we're aren't too over the moon that you three have a been having a ball in comparison to any of us. I mean, what are we supposed to feel? I'm sorry, Harry, I love you but I'll just say what everyone here is thinking: I'm pissed you're wearing silk, a silver collar, and smell like apple shampoo."

Harry cursed his shampoo. If he had known it would last this long…

"You're glorified concubines," added Seamus resentfully, "while we're welcome mats ready to be used and thrown aside in the mud and rain to wash all the jiz off. Or at least I do hope you're concubines."

"Well what do you expect us to do about it?" Harry asked angrily.

"Just drop it, everyone," said Lavender, at whom Harry felt a rush of gratitude. Silence did fall but it was excruciatingly strained, only until Lavender added, "I'm so telling Dolohov I want to transfer here."

Her friend Parvati fought courageously against her quivering lips but she lost as she burst out in giggles. Unfortunately it was only so contagious as to infect them and the Creevey brothers alone while the others stoutly twisted their lips shut against all humour.

"I can't say I'm pissed exactly," said Fred. "Just… relieved." He smiled at his brother Ron.

"Yeah come on, you're all being mental, everyone," added George. "Don't be selfish like this. What's Gryffindor about?"

"I don't think Gryffindor does selflessness," Seamus said with a frown. "Isn't that Hufflepuff?"

The others chuckled but the Hufflepuffs weren't amused.

"Rosy stereotype you have for us there," drawled Justin. "May I suggest you don't take your cue from the School Hat – we're far from whatever ideas it has about what's Hufflepuff; it's only a thousand years out-dated. D'you know how many bloody hangers you find in dustb-" Justin fell to the floor after Edgecombe jabbed him with her chubby arm so furiously Harry only saw a thick blur of pink and heard the connecting thud into flesh.

Harry, along with everyone in that room, glanced wonderingly at Edgecombe's huge belly drooping scantily clad over her middle in a plain cream cloth her master must have tossed over her to cover her unsightly rolls and bulges like something that was too hideous to keep in the living room but couldn't fit in the attic. Justin picked himself up from the floor and lolloped back onto the arm of her couch, as she occupied every inch of its seat and more.

"I didn't say you were one of them," Justin groaned. "You're just fat."

The loud thud of Edgecombe smacking Justin in the head was disguised by a louder POP!

They all turned to the house-elf that had just appeared at the door.

"Tibby is told to tell the slaves to prepare for their entrance into the meeting." She disappeared shortly.

"We're actually going into the actual meeting?" said Ron. "I thought it'd be like when mum has a social gathering and we have to stick it out in our rooms for the whole day."

"Apparently not," murmured George. He ripped off a nail and chewed it nervously.

"Prepare ourselves how exactly?" Dean asked.

"I don't know. Harry and them can straighten their robes and hair," quipped Lavender. "That's about it."

Soon enough the silence in the sitting room was joined by the silence that suddenly fell in the dining room. Shortly following were scraping noises of chairs and hurried footsteps and movement. The sitting listened quietly in dread over into the next room. And they all jumped when there was a sudden

POP!

"Slaves, you've been summoned."

The long room was darkened save for the lit candles standing in serpentine candelabra along the table that stretched from the one side of the room to the other. On either side of the table stood a row of figures in the name of Death Eaters and select Brothers, dark-cloaked and unmasked, white and red masks lain on the table in front of them. Two seats on either side of the throne-like one at one end of the table stood empty.

Moments before, a gong-like vibration had reverberated along the walls of the manor, as palpable deep in the gut as though someone had just dropped into one a physical knowledge that something or someone had just breached the gate. There was a wait of two minutes before hard footsteps could be heard approaching along the hallway outside the dining room.

Three dark figures emerged from the doorway. Scant light unwillingly threw itself on them as they crossed the floor toward the table. But already, and even without the aid of the soft candlelight, the hood of the middle figure gleamed a fluorescent tea green.

The two figures beside it took their seats, and the rest of the Death Eaters took their cue. The figure on the left of Voldemort dropped his hood to reveal greasy hair curtaining a hooked nose, while opposite him the man with a long, twisted face ran his gaze along the table at his fellows.

Voldemort took his throne and dropped his hood to reveal a travesty of the expression of life and the quaesitum of squalor: a smothered blur of avocado flesh smeared like pastel across the visage of a skull. Yet there was hair on the skull, a wavy brunette cap curving over the temple; the hand that removed the hood was that of a teenager, grown out of baby fat, and the promise of a man's; the eyes were not slit-like as before but were human, though the pupils still burned scarlet. These fixed upon the faces of the men at the table and with a sudden thrill of purpose they blazed.

"Death Eaters," said Voldemort, "tonight we call here in the home of one of our very own, recently passed away and graciously offered to us by one of the only remaining Malfoys. What's left is to wish that the proceedings which shall take place at his table be as fittingly grand. Will the hosts show themselves?"

The shadows behind the doorway down at the other end of the room flickered and then spat out two figures in similarly dark attire. The taller of the two took a seat right at the end and opposite a Death Brother, while the shortest took one facing the length of the table to Voldemort.

"We're glad you've mustered the stomach to join us," Voldemort said, smiling at Draco.

"It's our pleasure, My Lord," returned Draco. He looked suddenly much paler. "There is no higher an-"

"How has the stay with your dear slaves been?" Voldemort enquired, cutting across Draco as though he heard the lacking sincerity in his voice louder than he heard the attempted praise.

"They've been fine, My Lord," Draco answered.

"But where are they?" asked Voldemort. He looked around the darkened dining room as though expecting to catch the slaves' apparent shapes within the darkness, for the first time that night acting as befitted his teenage appearance. "I seem to be more excited than I bargained for coming here," he went on, as he moved about restlessly in his throne. "At the least I would like to see Potter standing in this room under this roof, just to – for the moment – convince myself I've achieved so much – not enough – but much. The world can follow soon enough!"

His excitement was indeed clear to every person in the room as Voldemort quivered in his throne, straining against the threat of an exultant grin, and trying to stopper the seeping glare of his scarlet eyes. But far from infectious, this excitement sent a thrill of apprehension down Draco's spine as he turned his seat and whispered, "Tibby."

Tibby led the party into the room promptly in the midst of the Death Eaters and Brothers' laughter, which seemed the nervous kind, as many of them appeared not to have a clue of what to do and how to react to Voldemort's actions.

"Oh, Salazar's glory. Everyone is here," Voldemort observed. It seemed he hadn't expected the other slaves apart from Harry, Ron, and Hermione to be present. "All of you brought your own, I see. I perhaps should have picked up more fervently on this slave-keeping fad."

"My Lord, we weren't too sure-" stuttered the man next to him with the twisted face, at whom Voldemort waved a hand.

"No matter, Dolohov," said Voldemort. "Large audiences have never been a bad thing." He grinned at the throng of teenagers grouping together to the side of the room. "Please, make yourselves comfortable with your masters."

The Death Eaters and Brothers sprung into action now that their leader's words had returned to a plane with which they were familiar, of commands which expected actions. They beckoned imperiously at their respective slaves, to which all but Harry, Ron, and Hermione obliged. Harry stood in shock as he watched his friends stalk over to their masters as if their minds had been cracked, broken, rewired, and finally remade. They walked off without a glance at each other but had their eyes set straight on the laps of their masters.

It could have been heartbreaking to watch, only Tibby and Draco hissed at him and Ron and Hermione, both their eyes widened, pointing them to the floor beside Draco. Their panic was justified, for Voldemort for a while had minded only Harry, watching him as he strode over to Draco and lowered himself to the floor next to the legs of Draco's chair.

Hermione nudged them to follow suit in folding their legs, cradling their hands in their laps, and bowing their heads as instructed a fortnight ago by Malfoy, who began breathing much easier. Harry quickly stifled his disbelief that Hermione remembered that tiny detail that far back and stared at the floor between his legs rather than the sight of his former schoolmates in the laps of Death Eaters.

But at this point he failed against a sudden urge and glanced upwards in spite of himself and looked for Colin and Dennis. They sat stiffly in the laps of two different men though closely seated. Both men under the cover of the table and the darkness of the room kept rubbing and crushing the brothers' inner thighs in their hands lustfully.

Rather chubby, Fred and George sat on the floor next to Rowle, a Death Eater with a doughy face that threatened to fall into his eyes - over which sparse stringy hair fell - and a curving, horse-like mouth that appeared to carry either too many teeth or too many bad ones.

Towering over his master even though he sat in his lap was Neville two chairs over. And though Harry couldn't see the Death Eater as he appeared so small, this fact and the slight, overly energetic and lustful shivering arms around Neville didn't make for a challenging guess.

Voldemort's eyes were still on Harry.

"May I borrow one of yours, Draco?" he asked.

"My Lord?" Draco looked at Voldemort as though he had asked whether he thought his new pet was cute. Said pet, as it slid in from the door, drew the glares and shivers of the men and the nervous shuffling of the children, who perhaps for the first time willingly, clutched onto their masters.

"Your slave," repeated Voldemort patiently. "The one in the middle. May I borrow him?"

Draco grew more nonplussed, and his eyes too were drawn to where candlelight broke into winding ripples and flickered with each passing scale and undulating coil. "Of course, My Lord. Anything of mine is-"

"Rise, slave," commanded Voldemort, now the furthest thing from a wavy-haired teenager as his voice recalled the high pitch and sibilance of his familiar hiss. Or perhaps it was the snake winding its way up his throne.

"Potter," said Draco, looking down at Harry.

"Your slaves bear names?" Voldemort questioned, one eyebrow raised.

Draco spiralled deeper and deeper into confusion. He seemed hopeless and hapless. "I don't understand, My Lord."

Voldemort didn't bother to reply to him. He merely watched as Harry rose to his feet and marched slowly to his end of the room, fearing the snake more than he thought he did Voldemort. But that was short-lived as he felt a rush of utter bewilderment and terror and frowned against it when Voldemort's face came into clearer focus, as Harry noticed it was that of a young man. Yet it was still as green as sage, and there were visible veins of a darker green running through his cheeks and forehead. And his eyes... His eyes were scarlet as always, but they looked like Harry's, like any other man's...

Fortunately Snape's sudden apparentness to him made him break contact with those scarlet eyes. Harry lingered on Snape's blank mask of a face as he moved behind him and then stopped before Voldemort. Only then did he notice the giant snake slithering up the back of Voldemort's throne and couldn't help a start.

Voldemort didn't look amused by this but carefully assessed Harry and took his measure. He had had the opportunity to appraise the threat that was Harry Potter before back in the graveyard, and the outcome was no different this time around – Harry Potter was just as helpless, just as vulnerable outside Dumbledore's arms.

"You like my pet, slave?" Voldemort asked.

Harry had been prepared not to answer him but the room had plunged into a thick and compelling silence.

"Not really," he replied.

"It seems to like you." It was so dark in the room that Harry only felt the tail of the snake stroke his toes earlier than he saw it: he started backwards again and hit the table behind him.

"You don't look overly comfortable, slave," observed Voldemort. "Is it Nagini here or is it my appearance? I owe that to the excellent work at the hands of Severus here. Every seven days I return to my original appearance. Then I take the potion again and within the seventh hour I am transformed into my youthful face. His potion performs miracles, doesn't it?" He then added, almost as an afterthought, staring at Snape, "Oh and I do hope it isn't the only miracle he can conjure."

Snape's dead mask remained.

"Your master does not seem comfortable himself either, slave," Voldemort went on, looking away and glancing at Draco down the table. "He appears to have a wide-eyed look about him. Perhaps nervous. Perhaps frightened of me. I don't think he'll mind a good soothing." Voldemort languidly turned to the head of the snake that just appeared at his shoulder and caressed its underside. The snake lifted its head and flicked its tongue at Harry. "Oh no. Not him, Nagini, but soon enough... soon enough..."

When Voldemort grew occupied with his snake, leaving Harry to hover there in front of them, repulsed, Harry heard from behind him, "Slave." He damned the instinct that made him turn his head, because there was only one person Malfoy could have been calling. Malfoy pointed at the floor next to Ron and Hermione and so he padded over. Behind him, the snake swayed onto the table.

As Harry resumed his position on the floor next to Draco's chair, Voldemort asked, "Draco, you're sure you don't need to calm your nerves a little bit? They seem slightly frayed. You have a slave at your will, may as well use it."

After a moment of hesitation, Draco was possessed by that desire Harry knew, to appease himself to those superior to him. With his next instruction to Harry he aimed undoubtedly to at least brush, if he couldn't surpass, the level of immorality of the Death Eaters and amply satisfy his lord, whose words were less of concern than they were of command. Yet Voldemort still betrayed a flake of shock when Draco, mouth twisting in determination and earnest resolve, ordered Harry, "Get under the table," and moved his hand towards his groin.

Voldemort's normal skin colour returned with a smile. He looked around his Death Eaters as though to say, 'Can you best that?'

Harry stared up at Draco, and he stared. He searched with screaming desperation into those grey eyes for the Draco Malfoy of four years at Hogwarts he knew... He looked wildly for anything to reconcile the two so he could somehow reduce the moment from what it was and assuage his dread, because that coping mechanism he recently reflected on was spluttering and choking and stalling out of order – failing to find in any of this a new normal to which to adapt, like gas seeking equilibrium in a room. But it didn't. Soiled by a humanly intrinsic affinity for sin, it wasn't as exquisite as raw, random Nature – there was nothing natural about it, and there was no escaping the fact that he had been ordered to give oral sex to another boy, his master... And he knew one of them was going to be in a kind of trouble he shied from imagining if he had to be told twice.

Robbed more time to absorb the shock of what Malfoy seemed to be demanding, Harry felt almost surreal and lightheaded as he crawled into the shadow of the table and faced Malfoy's groin, refusing to spare a glance in anyone's direction for fear of stinging ignominy. Noise droned out as though the underside of the table was a sound booth or everyone stopped twittering and it went quiet. Until Malfoy pulled the zip of his pants down. The pale hands deftly pushed the fabric aside, pulled over a pair of green silk Barmees, and lifted out something long, pale, and tubular. Harry could barely see anything in the shadow under the table, but he couldn't mistake what that was. Malfoy clicked his fingers at him and wagged his penis.

Since the meeting began Narcissa had kept her deadpanned stare at a carved-wood trophy under the watch of a white-bearded man in a portrait above it. And she continued it while the snake slithered past her and while Harry knelt under the table doing things to her son. Her audacity to appear this way must have stemmed from her hope that the weak candlelight and the rows of dark figures beside her obscured her from Voldemort. But she was hopelessly unmissed.

"I hope we won't grow too cumbersome for you with all our shenanigans, Narcissa," Voldemort said, eyeing her sharply, "and I hope sooner rather than later we'll have no need of your humble abode and the world will seem just a little bigger, for us."

"It is sooner," Snape spoke up. The chairs creaked as every head turned to him, including Narcissa's, who had just been shaken out of her stupor by Voldemort's words. "We have managed to kidnap and replace the Consenate in the Bureau of Magic in America. It's only a matter of time until we work our way to the Chancellor himself, given his leanings to the conservatives. Hence we thought we circumvent the long haul by not bothering with the Prosenate. We're on the brink of taking for ourselves the seat of the second-largest magical nation in the world. It together with the Ministry of Magic, the Indian Board of Magic will be but a minor irritation."

The men muttered amongst themselves and cast looks at Snape, momentarily incredulous beyond commendation. But silence fell when Voldemort spoke.

"But this is most impressive, Severus," he praised. His snake, long forgotten, was stretching over the space between the table and Draco, who looked torn between his fear of it and his pleasure by Harry.

"I aim to please you, My Lord," replied Snape modestly. Dolohov swelled in his seat and his twisted face twisted even more, no doubt steaming in indignation that he hadn't received any share of the praise.

Draco's eyes rolled to the ceiling as he stifled a hiss. The snake wound around his chair, gliding inches from his neck...

"But what about the Chinese?" one Death Eater, who wasn't so quick to ladle praise upon Snape, called out.

Snape looked lazily and almost exasperatedly at this Death Eater as though he had just turned to his regular detractor.

"What about the Chinese?" Snape asked, blinking slowly at him.

"Well aren't they the biggest country in the world?" the Death Eater argued. "Shouldn't we be more worried about them than about people backward and mindless enough to still be riding carpets in the air?"

Snape took a moment before he answered him, as if taken back and trying to calculate the Death Eater's IQ. It didn't take long to complete his seeming calculations and reply.

"You will know that the magical nation in Asia is amongst the smallest in the world, or perhaps you shouldn't have skipped that many History of Magic lessons in your youth. The stronghold the Muggle government maintains on its citizens to this day in almost every facet of their lives, combined with its fraught political relationship with surrounding nations and the citizens' own fierce traditionalism and famous modesty, hardly bodes well for any soul found in the middle of an unlikely or unnatural occurrence. The magical nation has hence over time been fragmented into small clumps and relegated to the fringes of the land, where much less caution is required. It's little wonder therefore they have such little representation in the Quidditch World Cup let alone appear in the register of the International Confederation of Wizards. There's your history lesson for the day, Rookwood."

Rookwood's face distorted as though he'd just tasted Pixie dung.

"They have representation at the World Cup at all?" burbled one Death Eater in a thick, grainy, and amazed voice. "Didn't think anything came from that side of the planet."

"The Tengus, I remember," said another Death Eater. "Knew my Ages book from back to front. The Toyohashi Tengus Quidditch team. Sound familiar?" he asked in a patronizing tone to a Death Brother sitting next to him, who nodded nervously and who looked fresh-faced enough to still own a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages. "Bloody flop the whole team is. Where did you hear them win a World Cup?"

Another Death Brother turned to Draco, who had just moaned out loud, and a drop of sweat ran down his temple.

"My Lord," spoke up Dolohov, gazing at Voldemort imploringly, "I managed to take out the people around the Consenate so Severus could plant the potion."

Voldemort recoiled and visibly struggled to find a point in Dolohov's words. "You acted indispensably, Dolohov. I don't doubt it."

"Shit," mewed Draco. He scrunched his eyes shut and shivered as the snake grazed his neck and head, twisting around it. Even by the soft candlelight, it was hard to miss the red, glowing cheeks of the former Hogwarts students as their eyes were drawn to Draco with every moan and breath of ecstasy.

Dolohov nodded breathlessly but shrunk back in his seat. He however swiftly surged back to life when his eyes glinted in resentment as Voldemort turned back to Snape.

"Have there been more recent developments, Severus?" Voldemort asked.

"Yes, My Lord," answered Snape. "That other 'miracle' has been completed successfully: the potion is ready."

"What potion?" asked a Death Eater in whose lap Lavender sat. There was a thick thud as a coil of the snake fell to the floor next to Draco's chair. There was another thud as Harry started in fright and banged his head against the table.

"The Magical Ancestry Verification Potion, or MAV," replied Snape. He turned back to Voldemort. This and dropping his voice to an intimate level with Voldemort visibly vexed many a Death Eater, while the Death Brothers hung onto Snape's every word as though taking mental notes on how to impress their leader. "We can begin testing the Hogwarts students and every supposed witch and wizard that walks along the ground at your utter, My Lord."

The veins in Voldemort's face thickened and darkened as upon it there grew an expression of wild, almost bestial joy. His voice constricted with emotion as he whispered, "You will be honoured above all others, Severus!"

Snape bowed graciously. "My Lord."

Voldemort fought to control his emotions. "Yes, we shall finally know, once and for all, by this potion, who is magical and who is intruder. Those intruders, foul imposters in Mudbloods and half-bloods, will be cast back to the world in which they belong or face our wands. And finally we will rid the magical world of the rot and purify it. Then, my Death Eaters, we can begin to rebuild the world in the image of our own.

"We begin with putting the Ministry workers to the test. After purifying the leading body of the nation our next urgent call is the cleansing of our schools. Our schools, dear Salazar! Where the nation assembles its motor, forms its heart! We must make sure we educate and nurture only those who are worthy to receive the knowledge of magic we hold onto. That is the only way we can ensure the nation's proper prosperity. Businesses and other organizations can follow after. I have Hogwarts so it will not be a problem. Nor will Durmstrang be. We crush Beaubaxton if it doesn't toe the line...

"I should check my enthusiasm, however," Voldemort went on, trying to calm the rise and fall of his chest. "It assumes all is as pleasing as the news Snape gives us... Dumbledore."

The name did something to the room, to the men at the table. There was a ripple of reaction across the rows, but no one spoke. The head bobbing under the table ceased.

Voldemort looked around at his followers. "Dumbledore still eludes us. Your search so far has been futile, Rowle?"

The Death Eater on whom Justin Flinch-Fletchy sat shuffled in his seat nervously. He had a sallow, pockmarked face suggesting an acne-riddled teenage never quite overcome.

"Most unfortunately, My Lord," Rowle lamented. "We're searching everywhere – even oversees. But my agents, they've reported nothing back so far."

Voldemort didn't nod in understanding. He continued watching Rowle, but he was clearly thinking.

"He must be planning something," Voldemort said quietly. "A revolt. I can feel it, as vividly as I felt Hogwarts on the tips of my fingers. I have finally taken it, so it must mean Dumbledore must be out there on the brink of an offensive attack. It must be it. Yet we have his staff captive, some of whom are in his Order... Where could his support derive from...?"

Snape was startled slightly when Voldemort called his name because he had seemed to have been in his own mind, musing rhetorically.

"I've—I've no idea, My Lord," stuttered Snape. "A revolt in his position is unfathomable-"

"Do you know of any other agents at his command outside the Order?" demanded Voldemort.

Snape too broke a sweat, but it wasn't because Draco just sighed in pleasure. "He hasn't alluded to any agents he has outside of the Order, no, My Lord, or he hasn't told me of them."

"But he's supposed to trust you!" yelled Bellatrix Lestrange. Her furious shout nearly launched Dean off her lap. "Isn't that the little holy trump card you keep flashing at us from your sleeve, Snape?"

Snape visibly regained a sliver of calm. It was much less heavy on his mind and more merciful on his resolve to address Bellatrix than his master. The snake twisted its way up the leg of the table and began slithering across the table.

"That he does – categorically, I'll have you know, Bellatrix," Snape drawled. "However, there might – just might – be a possibility that Dumbledore hasn't revealed all of himself to me – make that anybody – other than to himself. You're familiar with that strange, secretive nature of his, My Lord." Snape turned back to Voldemort. "But I still maintain that an attack at this stage is impossible by him. He hasn't been in contact with any of his teachers or members of the Order of the Phoenix. And his relationship with the Ministry is famously strained to say the least. Dumbledore has simply fled for his freedom."

The green veins at Voldemort's temples thudded furiously as he fastened his scarlet glare on Snape, who kept his gaze steady at him. After a few long moments Voldemort moved again, drawing back, and released his scorching eyes from Snape. Snape seemed to emerge from a trance.

"Keep moving, Potter!" hissed Draco to his lap.

Voldemort stared at Draco's pale, pointed face from up the table, but again Voldemort's brain was working so furiously he couldn't see what was in front of him.

"So you claim Dumbledore's escape was the end of him?" he asked. His snake reached over the chasm between the table and him, joining him at his side.

"Positively, My Lord," replied Snape. "Omnipotent as he seemed, he is simply powerless when he's all alone, and now every person is removed from him."

Voldemort breathed much more easily. He stroked his snake. Draco uttered his final moan.


	8. Calamities & Celebrations

**Chapter 9**

**Calamities & Celebrations**

It was a sombre hazy sight rolling down the countryside: a tall figure of an old man cutting through the early mist of the morning. Beaconing silver from as far as the eye could see, the man's impressive waist-length beard and his purple robes dragged over the tall wet lawn, and his feet sunk and lifted in and out of the damp dew-covered grass exhaustingly as he hobbled onward towards a small farmhouse nestled in the middle of a dip in the large fields.

His progress was watched by a pair of eyes from the makeshift window of the wooden house to which he headed. The eyes moved out of sight while the old man with the long beard footslogged nearer.

After hobbling the last distance between him and the house, the old man halted in front of the Dutch door and leant against the wall, panting heavily. The bags under his eyes were large and his face was forlorn and drawn. After catching his breath, he rapped on the door, which promptly gave way to another man significantly younger but still quite advanced in age.

"Good morning," said the man in the purple robes.

The man on the other side of the door studied these carefully with his mouth hanging open slightly.

"Yes? Good morning."

"I've come a long way," said the robed man, the bottom part of his beard wet and dirty from the dew. "I would greatly appreciate it if you could afford a travelling man a warm hospitality."

The younger man, still mesmerized by the older man or his eyes were perpetually swollen, waved his hand and made a dismissive noise, but he opened the door a little wider and turned to head back into his house.

"Thank you," said the older man, and he stepped inside. He made no move to divest any layer of his heavy-looking robes, something the owner of the house failed to miss. The robes dragged dew across the floor as the man took one of the two seats tucked into a small round wooden table in the middle of a very small kitchen divided by nothing more than the edge of a red carpet from the farmer's bedroom.

Wearing old sooty light-blue Manchester overalls, the farmer had a shock of pale-blue eyes in the middle of a lined, hollow-cheeked face. He looked jagged, lanky, and rough around the edges. The grey light fell harshly on his gruff, pitted stubble, and when he let go of Dumbledore's hand after shaking it and rubbed his own together they sounded like sandpaper grinding together. He however still possessed the exceptional appearance of the few old men who seem to arch back to their childhood, growing more naïve and excitable faster than they did older and further sunken ahead.

"Elmer is the name," said the farmer. "Nice to make your acquaintance. Everyone calls me El."

The older man glanced at the sprawling vastness of land outside the window and wondered just who this "everyone" was.

"Albus Dumbledore. A pleasure to meet you, El," the older man said.

"Care for a drink?" El offered, as he backed away towards his overhead cupboard.

"Don't mind if I do," trilled Dumbledore. But a moment later he groaned softly and clutched his leg.

"What happened to your leg?" El enquired, over his jutting shoulder. He grabbed a large bottle of golden liquid that swished richly from corner to corner of the glass. The bottle seemed to a weight more than his arm could handle, but El had no further trouble bringing it down carefully onto the counter top. He took two glasses from the top of the kitchen sink and poured generous amounts of liquid into them.

"Oh just had an accident," replied Dumbledore. "Sprained an ankle landing in the middle of nowhere. Merlin knows that bird can fly."

"Bird?" said El, throwing Dumbledore a severe but wide-eyed look as he came towards the table. "You flew here by plane?"

"Oh no," Dumbledore said. "Let's just say I have a very magical and trusty bird by the name of Fawkes. I try to take him everywhere I go, you see."

"Well you made it sound like the other way around," El huffed. "Like you've been riding the damn bird itself everywhere. Sorry thing."

"It would have been very sorry indeed," muttered Dumbledore.

"Here have some whiskey – it will loosen the throat and the cold just a little now," El said. "Careful now, some rough stuff."

"Thank you." Dumbledore upended the offered glass in his mouth, returning it to the table three seconds later. When he returned his eyes as well to El, he found that El's eyes much more swollen than they were before talks about birds.

"Aaye, you're a thirsty man," praised El, in a hoarse voice as though it was he who had just downed a glass of whiskey without so much as a twitch in expression.

"Hm, considerably kinder on the throat," observed Dumbledore, frowning at the glass, very much in disappointment. He took the bottle on the table and twirled it in his hand, studying the label. He then looked at El and asked, "Have you ever heard of Firewhiskey?"

El coughed. He seemed to step out of a trance. "Don't think I want to." Thereafter El there was bigger spark in El's eyes and he was significantly more jovial with Dumbledore, very impressed indeed.

"So how come a man your age is wondering about out there in the freezing morning in the middle of nowhere?" El asked, as if by "your age" he implied he was a whole lot younger. But it was true the length and whiteness of Dumbledore's beard was extremely telling.

"I was just about to enquire as to where exactly nowhere is," Dumbledore said. He knew that his hedge had worked, as El's chest had swelled with pride and wiped away all suspicion from his eyes.

"Just a couple o' k's from Killin. The heart of Scotland! Far quieter than its extremities," El bragged, his voice softening with a trace of disdain as his bulging eyes smiled with fondness at his next words. "There's nothing much out here but I've always liked it here, can't think of a place better. Few people and even fewer roads." He lapsed into self-satisfied chuckles.

"Hm," said Dumbledore. "At least I'm still in Scotland."

"From which part of Scotland you're from then?" El asked again.

Dumbledore took a moment to answer. "From Hogwarts, my school."

By Dumbledore's pause, it was obvious he was anticipating some form of reaction from El.

"Ah," said El slowly, his big swollen eyes resting even more hugely on Dumbledore's face. "Heard of that school. Many tales fly around here." Again Dumbledore's eyes darted outside the window to the open vastness. Either the rest of the community was invisible or the man had succumbed to senile dementia. Perhaps the latter could account for his child-like demeanour, and his readiness to believe in the existence of magical schools. "Er, so you teach there?"

Perhaps he hadn't enough confidence before, should he scare El, but now Dumbledore had bundles of it as he slowly cleared his wand of his pocket and, with a touch of light in his blue eyes, said, "I am the headmaster of the school." Whereas moments before pride had shone through El's eyes, so it shone in Dumbledore's.

El's eyes had bulged even further at the sight of the wand. His throat worked nervously even as he maintained a level voice. "Hoh, you have one of those too, I see… Have seen a couple of folks like you… People think I've gone round the bend talking 'bout it, so I stopped years ago… Looks impressive, and dangerous…"

"Dangerous in the wrong hands, yes," finished Dumbledore. "But luckily these hands aren't made to destroy, but to try and build instead." Dumbledore placed his wand on the table and pondered it. Suddenly what El must have perceived as an impressive, almost regal air about him – helped along by the purple robes and the deep and rich voice – evaporated as Dumbledore's shoulders sunk, and as the merry spark bled from his bright blue eyes, and as the truths mounted in his head and on top of his shoulders.

El tore his gaze from the stick on the table and scanned the lines of Dumbledore's face. "You look like a man forsaken by the rest of the world. Have you a family?" Only then did El take his first sip from his glass, though one eye kept sight of the wand.

"A family in the effective sense, no," answered Dumbledore, "though I have reason to belief my brother is still alive in hiding."

"Hiding? What for? The bobbies hunting for him?"

"A force much more frightening, I'm afraid, my friend," sighed Dumbledore. "Whose object isn't so ratified as the please-men, as your fellow contemporaries would call them, nor sanctioned by formal avenues of authority. No. Voldemort has far more abandon than that. Deadly abandon. It's wishful to hope for an enemy as predictable and organized as law enforcement."

"So this 'Voldemort,'" began El, trying to stay abreast on the plane of the watery concepts about which they conversed, "is searching all sky and earth for your brother then? Sounds like a nice super villain my grandson would love to play."

"And one which my own grandson would love to play the hero against," Dumbledore chuckled, sobering quickly however. "Or at least is… forced to… and at least I delight in thinking of him as a grandson…"

"Who's this now? Does Voldemort want to kill him too?"

"Him and a whole nation of people," replied Dumbledore, still looking at his wand, but beyond it. "But forsaken? No, I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm alone." Avoiding the question of who his "grandson" was, Dumbledore poured himself another glass of fireless whiskey, downed it, wiped his mouth, and looked out the window, into the grey blanket of gloomy morning. "There is a soul out there willing to heed my call. A very dear friend – tiny, but comes armed with a very big heart."

***0***

Eight hours before and seven hundred kilometres away a boy lay in his bed staring at the canopy unseeingly.

Harry brought his hands up and covered his eyes. But this couldn't burn out of his mind the sight of the pale, chiselled underside of a pointy chin.

He moved around and rubbed at his skin. But he couldn't scratch the milky skin off him.

He tried not to breathe. But he couldn't get the smell of Malfoy off him. His hands reeked of it, and his lips.

He shivered when he recalled the pungent odour under his nose, in his mouth – shuddered as Malfoy's moan ran through his body as though shooting out of it with his seed, but then muffled when Malfoy's thighs rose in ecstasy and locked his head in. His pulse quickened at being caged like that, thundered when he felt Malfoy pushing his head down, trying to bury his penis in the back of his throat as he ejaculated; and Harry felt a jerk in his body of alarm travel from his solar plexus, up his throat, and nearly sent his lunch onto Malfoy's lap. Malfoy had tested the limits of his gag reflex more than once. Already it was horrible to feel the nauseating slime of semen and saliva on his tongue and in between his teeth – he didn't need to have the taste of his own sick too.

It was already disgusting enough to have Malfoy's tool in his mouth – he didn't need the scare of the snake, didn't need to feel its weight in his knees as its tail thudded on the carpet and slid across it, or hear its terrifying hiss. He already had his own saliva and Malfoy's precum running down the shaft into the small thatch of pubic hair – he didn't need to add to it his tears. Already he felt the chills along his spine as a coil of snake rolled down his back – he didn't need the torturous dilemma: to feel the soft bulge of thighs under his hands as he braced himself with them against Malfoy's demanding thrusts, but hugged the thighs for sanctuary against the scales sliding down his back.

It felt like no end would come and all friend and foe had forsaken him and every coin of luck the Lady had spared him he had squandered until there was nothing left but dirty squalor, until the dirt and darkness ate the sky and swallowed the ground, until he was so suspended between darkness above and darkness below, and he could do no more to keep himself sane and one scruple of hope in his otherwise empty pocket than keep his eyes shut tight against the darkness and keep pleasuring Malfoy until his scruple of hope flipped in his pocket to a shiny side and Malfoy's passion finally ruptured. That was his only hope. Fulfil Malfoy.

And so he had sucked, in his terror of the snake, in his disgust of the penis, as diligently as a miner threw a pick to a rock wall. And finally, gloriously, tearfully, he felt the seed drench the back of his throat. His coughs were wet and painful, but he had made it. The darkness had gone, the snake was gone and the insistent hands behind his head now hung over the arms of the chair, and the thighs had risen again at the highest point of ecstasy and stayed there.

Harry was done. He had looked aside at the floor, wiped his chin, and flicked the slime off his hand, for he dared not wipe it off with Malfoy's pants… _My name_… which had been pulled down and kicked off during the process. Harry had no desire… _Don't know where she is_… to look from under the table up to the legs and thighs – caramel in the throw of candlelight onto pale skin – and legs folded into the half mounds of the buttocks and the slimy and messy scene at the... _That's my name…_

"POTTER!"

Harry leapt from his bed, cursing the thundering of his heart against his chest.

"POTTER! TIBBY! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?"

Harry's ears reared and sharpened to the busy and violent progression of noise down the hall towards him, heart in his throat.

"TIBBY! WHY DID YOU LET THEM GO WITHOUT MY PERMISSION?"

There was a loud popping sound and then a high squeaking noise in which rumbling apologies flowed like a current down the corridor.

"Master Malfoy! Tibby is terribly sorry she made the slaves go to their room! But Tibby didn't know what to do! Master Malfoy was sleeping in his chair and the meeting was over and the slaves were sitting on the floor and doing nothing! Tibby is very very-!"

"SHUT UP! YOU SHOULD'VE WOKEN ME UP AND WAITED FOR MY CALL! POTTER, WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU?"

As soon as those words rung outside his room, Harry struggled to stifle his racing heart and fought to keep clear of fear caused by his master. He didn't want to fear his master, at least not too much. He tried to straighten his face and loosen his clenched jaw as the door flew open and in barrelled the most furious Malfoy Harry had ever had to encounter.

White hair flying, black robes flapping, Malfoy screamed, "DID I TELL YOU TO LEAVE ME?"

Harry's eyes wanted to dart away from those grey eyes, for they bore the memory of what he had been forced to do minutes prior, but they couldn't for the life of them free themselves from the lock in which Malfoy had ensnared them with his arresting glare.

"No," Harry answered back, more calmly than he had given himself credit for.

"SO WHY DID YOU LEAVE?" Malfoy shouted back.

"Because Tibby told us to," answered Harry, still unable to evade Malfoy's eyes.

"DO YOU GET ORDERS FROM ME OR TIBBY? HUH? DON'T YOU DARE DO THAT TO ME AGAIN!"

And finally, Harry was released from the lock as something like vulnerability and betrayal flashed across Malfoy's eyes, breaking the fastening on Harry's eyes; Harry looked away.

"Come!" ordered Malfoy. He jerked as though to turn around and storm out of the room, but when he saw in Harry's hesitation that he had made no move to follow him, Malfoy, eyes blazing, marched around the bed and grabbed Harry by the wrist, sweeping him away both by force and by surprise. Malfoy dragged them out of the room and into the corridor, where Ron and Hermione had poked their heads out of their doors and stared at them. Malfoy didn't bark at them but glared furiously. Tibby made sure Ron and Hermione closed their doors, tears and snot dripping down her chin.

"Master Malfoy, Tibby is so very sorry-" cried Tibby as she ran from behind, for Malfoy was rushing the pair down the hall very quickly.

"Shut up and go away!" barked Malfoy. In all of heaving hiccups and shuddering sobs, Tibby miserably snapped her fingers and disappeared.

Malfoy pulled Harry the whole way to his room. At several points Harry had dared to lean his weight back just a little, making Malfoy throw a glare behind him, but nothing more than that. Malfoy crashed his door open with his shoulder, stomped in, pulled Harry close and threw him on the floor, where Harry skidded until his back found the brass knobs of the bedside drawers.

"Ouch…" whispered Harry.

Malfoy glared down at him for a while and then threw himself on the bed, where they listened to him breathe heavily like a winded and wounded beast until he calmed down a few minutes later.

"Come here," commanded Malfoy.

Harry dragged himself to his feet and approached the bed.

"Get over there." Malfoy pointed to the other side of the bed. Harry's eyes flicked there and back to Malfoy, startled for a moment, and then padded around the bed, climbed over the edge, and self-consciously placed himself carefully opposite Malfoy, unrelieved by the considerable space between them.

"Watch me in my sleep."

_Again?_ Harry thought. He had no concept of the time, hadn't for a while now, and he had spent a good deal of time in the library with his friends. But not before they had enjoyed a sun with the Giffies and Phiggles shining just a little less directly above their heads and more at two o'clock than any time else. He judged it couldn't have been later nine o'clock. Yet Malfoy was sleepy. Then again, Harry though his nightmares were what was keeping him awake at night and sleepy during the day. Hence he, Harry, had to watch over him.

Malfoy had slipped off his robes and shirt. He pulled off his pants and grabbed his sleepwear from underneath his pillow. Even as Harry stared resolutely at the wall in front of him, the appearance of green silk Barmees in the corner of his eye was too sudden and vivid – extremely vivid – to miss. His throat threatened to heave but he pushed it down and swallowed hard.

He closed his eyes and drew into himself slightly as he felt the bed sink with Malfoy's movements and weight. He scrunched his eyes tighter and he felt a sickening, clammy shiver rise up his body. Malfoy finally laid still and his lump was all that was left of him. But he left Harry in a horribly discomfiting flu-like state. He felt sick all over; his skin felt clammy and overly sensitive and buzzing with nerves; every stretch of it screamed and screamed less with actual pain and more with tingly discomfort: Malfoy changing into his sleepwear and just being present inches from him rushed the memories back into Harry's mind.

It was like Harry couldn't escape the flesh of Malfoy: Harry knew his weight; he knew his voice – in all ranges from a hiss to a scream; he knew his touch from the strongest grip as he dragged by him the wrist to the softest almost-caresses of his hands weaving in and out of his hair as he coaxed Harry's mouth to swallow him deeper; he knew his taste, from penis to foot. He knew everything about Malfoy and it repulsed him to the bone and it radiated in waves to his sweat-slicked skin. Malfoy was more than his master to him now. His master's skin had wrapped itself around him, gangrenous and inescapable. He knew Draco's body, intimately, and Harry had never felt sorrier for himself than he did then.

And in this suffocating anaconda of thought and sensation, once more Harry heard it, and the moan from Malfoy's lips sliced through the flesh and the coils released him, but they didn't because his ears had the number in pitch and volume and everything else about the moan. He knew that moan. And it swallowed him once more.

Harry looked aside at Malfoy, who remained motionless, his platinum-blond hair fallen to one side on the pillow, leaving the soft light to run and flatter the slice of jaw like a fine cloth shining the blade of a sword. Harry reluctantly watched the features of the face for any signs of movement. Instead another moan of struggle issued, and then the forehead creased. Malfoy's lips drew inward and pushed outward, making a "P" sound. Harry watched him quietly, but that was all that happened because Malfoy didn't make another sound thereafter, though his frown remained.

Malfoy made another "P" sound seconds later but gave no further sign of struggle even as he still frowned. But Harry loved to push his luck when Malfoy was vulnerable and subject to discretion like this, however limited it was.

Malfoy made another sound of effort, and then he muttered, "Potter," and Harry's blood froze.

A million speculations rushed through his mind. What was Malfoy doing with his name in his sleep? Before Harry could repulse himself with a thought that involved the both of them naked, Malfoy gave his loudest and most haunted moan.

Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second but rushed over and shook Malfoy. "Malfoy. Malfoy."

Malfoy came to and lifted his head. He gazed at a spot on Harry's midriff, or through it.

"I could feel it next to me, it was right next to me, lying on the bed with me, Potter…!" moaned Malfoy, near crying. "This animal… I felt its weight on the bed. It was breathing down on my face. It wanted me to open my eyes and I wanted to say your name but it—it didn't want me to but it said to me, 'Finish that name,' but I just couldn't finish your name and I knew if I said it it would go away… Potter, Potter it was right there, it was right there…!"

Malfoy slapped the bed and covered his face, crying.

"I don't wanna sleep anymore, I don't wanna sleep anymore…" howled Malfoy.

Harry sat there, despite himself watching Malfoy dissolve next to him, and despite himself, felt an ounce of sympathy for him. Hermione's words to Harry were now more than just speculation – they had to be true. For someone to feel something in their dream as solidly and surely as a weight on the bed must have meant the solid and surely thing was an Incubus. Malfoy couldn't have been referring to his own weight if he broke down like this. He must have known he, Harry, had been lying there too, after all he had ordered him there. Malfoy must have been visited by an Incubus while he had been sleeping in his chair in the dining room too.

Malfoy cried himself into silence until he turned onto his side and very quietly said, "Come closer."

Harry duly scooted a little nearer.

"Here," Malfoy said, patting the area right next to him. He turned to his other side while Harry inched closer and closer until all that separated them was less than a hand's width. Malfoy closed the gap as he scooted back until his back grazed Harry's arm. Harry wasn't sure if this was intentional or not, so he kept still.

But Malfoy didn't suffer that one scare. More and more came, and more and more times Malfoy jerked out of sleep and swore in frustration. However, his dreams must have grown less severe, because though Malfoy slunk in and out of sleep, he didn't break down again and didn't moan. And the only thing to explain it, the only thing that had changed, was the presence of Harry's touch. Half reluctantly, half sympathetically offered, the hand rested on top of Malfoy's, lifelessly and colourlessly. It was just there – a warm but cold, reassuring but dispassionate limb than arm.

***0***

"What on Merlin's sweet earth did he want with you?" Hermione asked Harry the first opportunity she got. "Did he hurt you? The way he was so furious... I thought he could do anything to you..."

Ron and Hermione were on Harry's bed again in his room and due for the dining room in a few minutes' time for breakfast that next day.

"The usual," replied Harry. "He wanted me to watch over him again. Didn't do anything to me."

"Oh," breathed Hermione. She looked very relieved.

"So did he have more nightmares?" Ron asked.

Harry nodded. "Worse ones too. I think you're right about that Incubus thing, Hermione. He said he felt something sitting next to him in the bed, breathing down his face."

Ron and Hermione paused, blinking at him.

"Er, couldn't that something have been you, mate?" asked Ron delicately, as though trying not to imply too heavily that Harry might have a less-than-average I. Q.

"No it wasn't me," said Harry. "There was something else in that room. A person can't just moan and cry because another person is sleeping next to him. You'd believe me if you'd been there. I don't think Malfoy's faking it. He can't be."

"He's a bloody good actor, you should remember that," mumbled Ron.

"Well then the next question is who's bewitching him, and why," said Hermione.

"Well the 'why' is fairly easy to answer," Ron said, then muttering, "the git. But the 'who' is a little tougher. Couldn't it just be everyone? Because he does piss off a lot of people just for having the privilege to breathe. Who the bloody hell gave him that?"

"For goodness' sake, Ronald, let it go!" cried Hermione. "Gosh, I swear I've never met a more immature person than you in my entire life! You're not at Hogwarts anymore! Malfoy isn't a little mischievous runt who pisses everyone off for the fun of it anymore! Get it through your thick head that you're not at school anymore and grow up! Besides, he isn't mean to us anymore is he?"

"No he just owns us now," answered Ron tartly.

"Let me tell you you're being really pathetic," spat Hermione, continuing the diatribe she had started without warning. "Are you going to be pissed off about the things he did to you at school for the rest of your life-?"

"Why not?" said Ron.

"-Ron, from the bottom of my heart, grow up! We have far bigger things to worry about than over school pranks. You know your family isn't a bunch of blood traitor, so why do his taunts get to you like they do? And you know you're not stupid, neither is Harry. Urgh!" She turned away from Ron in disgust.

"Of course it's easier for you to say things like that," Ron fumed back, with the look of mustering his own tirade to answer Hermione's. "Look, you just happened to drop into our world-" Hermione whipped back to Ron and raised her eyebrows at the words 'our world' "-and find us going at each other. This rivalry has been happening long since you came here! So don't try and be all expert-y about it because you don't know anything about us!"

Hermione stared at Ron for a moment, eyes wide. Ron was usually generous with sharing things about the magical world they didn't know since they weren't raised in it. But it was the first time he used it against them.

Finally Hermione asked, "So you're perfectly content with playing along in a rivalry that existed even before you were born and one which you probably don't even know the cause of?"

Ron took a moment to answer, and when he did, he said, perhaps dismissively, "You won't understand."

"No I wouldn't," said Hermione, with a certain finality in her voice. She turned away from Ron and looked at Harry.

"So Malfoy was having nightmares again," she said, prompting Harry.

Harry had nearly dosed off during her and Ron's little face-off. "Yeah. Nightmares. Again. Didn't even have the courtesy to let me sleep it off after I did night watch for him. He kicked me out as soon as he woke up." He yawned.

Harry in his fatigue vaguely registered that he had possibly entered the fray of confrontation between Ron and Hermione, as his words – about Draco's unfairness – could be used as ammunition for an argument by Ron.

_POP!_

"Tibby is to tell the slaves it is time for breakfast," said Tibby softly. She disappeared before she could hear Hermione's thanks.

"That Malfoy was really nasty to her," Hermione hissed, before she could help herself. But Ron didn't capitalize on her words, instead opting to lead the way to the door.

Five minutes later they sat in the dining room facing the familiar wall. Behind them they could just about here the voice of Malfoy's mother talking to her son fondly.

"Your birthday is coming up quickly, dragon."

"Will you be there?" Draco asked, in a tone that suggested he was tossing the question at her accusatorily. Perhaps fittingly, there was a moment silence. Harry knew Malfoy's mother had been scarce around the manor for a while now.

"Would you like your friends come over again this year?" his mother asked, with a fresh impetus in her voice, as though forcing herself to recover from her son's words.

There was a loud snort. "As if this year is no different than any other. That would be splendid, Mother."

"Just because you aren't attending school anymore and a lot of things are happening doesn't mean you can't have your friends over again... It will be three days after Christmas, so we may as well leave the decorations on as Lucius never wished us to do... My little dragon is turning fifteen..."

"Mother!"

Harry knew that cry of embarrassment meant a sentimental gesture from Malfoy's mother.

"Oh you're getting too old for your mother's kisses? You'll never grow up in my eyes."

"Mo—You can't be doing this-! I'm too old for tickles!"

"You can't ever grow out of your funny bones, Draco. Nobody told you that? And I think I recall just where they are!"

"Naah! Mother, stop it! You're being ridiculous! Stop it! Ha-ha-ha-ha! The slaves are in the room! We're setting a bad example!"

"All right."

Narcissa must have stayed a little longer than ordinary before leaving for some friend's house, for while Harry, Ron, and Hermione were loading fodder in the manger for the Phiggles (the Giffies preferred to actually work for their meal and hunt in the forest) after breakfast, they received orders through Tibby to head back inside.

"We're going to be making decorations for Malfoy's birthday?" Ron blurted out, shocked. Tibby didn't pay him too much mind as she turned and started walking back towards the manor. "This is—this is—I didn't sign up for this. This is not fair. It's bad enough I make my own birthday presents and hang up my own decorations!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Ron," chided Hermione. "You more often tend to sit back and watch everyone work for you and give you things for one day in a year. And I'm not saying I'm completely thrilled before you say anything!"

Ron did have a tendency to exaggerate his poverty, usually for the amusement of others.

That clammy shiver ran up Harry's body, but it left him quickly on a beautiful day with his friends. This obligation was just another point of involvement, another point of contact – even if not physical – between him and Malfoy. Harry couldn't escape him.

It turned out Malfoy's mother hadn't gone to visit friends after all, as it was she who bought the things with which to make decorations.

So they spent a good portion of that day cutting out perfect circles (a challenge in and of itself) to stick to doilies for both the 'MERRY CHRISTMAS!' and 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY DRACO!' banner (Ron looked sick while he cut out the 'd' for Draco), hurting their cheeks blowing up Bozo's Never-Deflating (and Never-Ending, it felt) Balloons, hanging up countless wreaths on countless doors until Ron complained that one 'house' wasn't allowed to have so many doors.

What was more, many of those doors were in parts of the manor for the most part obscure, at from them. This consequently brought them to these scarcely treaded bowels of the manor, where meeting a milling house-elf occurred more frequently. Harry and Ron had to drag Hermione kicking after she wanted to talk to them on an "equal" level. They shined mirrors, brass ornaments, and door knockers; wiped walls, windows, furniture and sundry. They did everything short of chopping down a tree from the forest for the Christmas Tree.

"It's not like Christmas or his birthday is tomorrow or anything," complained Ron. "It's only the twenty-first, for Merlin's sake. Gimme a break before my back does."

"Good preparation is never a bad thing," Hermione said, her hair shivering as her arm worked on wiping the wall. "My nails could do without the extra labour though."

"And who are they gonna celebrate Christmas with?" said Ron. "Just the both of them? All this work just for the two of them?"

That was exactly what it turned out to be.

It was the most awkward day Harry had ever had to live through, between the fact they were slaves and that Christmas was a family affair cast a painful blanket of awkwardness around their every movement. Malfoy's mother had every intention of involving the three of them in their little celebration, while Malfoy had every intention to keep his authoritative distance from his subjects in order to keep them fearful or at least respectful of him.

Harry was sure Malfoy wasn't smiling as much as his mother wished him to. Though Harry was sure she didn't mind too much that they didn't get any presents. She dared not bring the slaves gifts; Harry thought Snape's words were still fresh on her mind. It was therefore the Draco Malfoy Show, and it wasn't his fault entirely. Before Lucius' passing, the Malfoys would still have one child, one child to dote on. And one child Bellatrix Lestrange could dote on too.

She had bustled in just before dinner, hadn't stuck around for it, but had dropped off two boxes of presents for Draco.

"I have one from Snape too."

Bellatrix had spat at the carpet in disgust and jiggled one of the boxes at Malfoy as though urging him to take it quickly as she couldn't bear it on her skin for any longer. When Malfoy had collected it, as well as the one from her (which Malfoy hadn't looked too keen to open) Bellatrix could continue breathing.

"We're very busy putting the Lord's plan in place, or I should say places," Bellatrix said proudly, explaining why she had to leave so soon.

She threw a sneer at Harry and friends before she swept out. Luckily they had been given fair warning before her appearance when they had all felt their diaphragms vibrate, because Harry wasn't sure what she would have done had she caught them sitting at the dinner table like equals of the Malfoys. Malfoy's mother, for the first time in a while, called them to the table only after she left.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were quite glad to throw themselves on Harry's bed after the admittedly wonderful dinner.

"That was super awkward," observed Hermione.

"I wonder what Jesus would think about them celebrating his life with help from their slaves," remarked Harry.

Ron looked between Harry and Hermione and rightfully deduced that it was one of their little moments of shared knowledge. He sighed, "All right I know I was a little nasty spinning that our-world-here-and-your-world-there crap to Hermione, but someone tell me who Jesus is."

Christmas, they found out, was only the start of the work. It was like unearthing something small and only wickedly finding out there was a nastier and larger part of it hidden in the ground. Sort of like digging out garden gnomes and being bitten for your trouble.

Festoons had to be draped up, the MERRY CHRISTMAS banner brought down, labels for the seating plan written up (Malfoy's mother trusted only Hermione to do this), and more and more cleaning had to be done.

The birthday boy looked far from excited, however. While his mother cast every limb in every direction to please him unsuccessfully, Harry recalled the little journal entry of Malfoy's about his reluctance to see his birthday through. So he wasn't naive enough to think it was because of the fact that Bellatrix's words had been very true indeed that Malfoy was pouting.

Harry knew Bellatrix's words of her master "putting plans in places" were true because every night Malfoy called him to his bed to watch over him, and so Harry would have access to _The Herald Independent. _One day after Christmas it read:

EXCLUSIVE

**YOU-KNOW-WH****O TIGHTENS GRIP ON GLOBE**

Leland Manthorp

BAITADI – He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named annihilated two key local board offices in the early hours of the morning. According to several reliable sources, Death Eaters stormed into the Baitadi and Dipayal Local Board of Magic offices at about 02:30, performed a massacre, and then reduced the buildings to the ground.

"It sounded like a bomb. It seemed they didn't take any prisoners or were out to steal top-secret documents. Just to wipe everything and everyone out," said one source about the Baitadi office. Another source said of the Dipayal office that the only things left of the office was "piles of debris and smoke rising from it".

The two areas were swiftly cordoned off and reporters were not allowed through. However grey smoke could be seen rising into the air from a scene of destruction on the ground littered with bodies at the site of the Baitadi office. A combined total of approximately 4 000 employees worked at the two offices.

Authorities at local level would not be drawn on the incident except for a press statement released in the morning. Premier-Rover Ravi Gordhan refused to field questions and referred reporters to his spokesperson Pravin Kharbanda.

"We're assessing the damage caused at the two Bureau offices. Our condolences go to the families of the employees as well as our promise to get to the bottom of who conducted the massacre and in all likelihood caused the destruction," said Kharbanda. He would not comment on the suggestion that it may have been an act of terror on You-Know-Who's part.

This constitutes what many believe as part of You-Know-Who's plot to topple the Indian Board of Magic in a larger plot for world domination. Many, including local popular newspapers in the United Kingdom, still think the idea of a living You-Know-Who a myth. Newspapers there have yet stayed clear of mentioning You-Know-Who. Several of them have accused _The Herald Independent_ of being "run by comic book junkies" for publishing words like "world domination" and "resurrection".

The destructive simultaneous attacks come almost a week after _The Herald Independent_ broke the news first of You-Know-Who's infiltration into the Bureau of Magic of the United States of America (BOMUSA) through at least one known high-ranking office-bearer, Consenate Pius Clarkson.

Clarkson's rival, Prosenate Bilius Foxx, has been quick to fan rumours of him being hoodwinked by You-Know-Who's minions ahead of the April elections. But many politicians and political pundits have rendered Foxx's recent actions as baseless and "another shameless instance of mud-slinging from the liberals".

(additional reporting by Suresh Govender and the Indian Aurah Service)

When Harry got the bottom of the article he very reluctantly felt much more intelligent than he did five minutes ago. He hated conceding anything positive to what he saw as high culture, or at least whatever Malfoy used.

The newspaper read ahead of its time. For one thing, it recognized that Voldemort had come back to life – something _The Daily Prophet_ would sooner drop its biggest advertiser, The Three Broomsticks, than do. The paper also didn't have a very obvious bias. Harry could even say it didn't have a bias at all if it weren't for its defensive stance against rival newspapers and that it tried too hard to distinguish itself from them as if they were 'low'. He didn't mind too much its touting of its own name several times in the article and making the reader aware it was first to break whatever news, a tendency of all newspapers.

He looked aside at Malfoy's sleeping face, saw it calm and peaceful, and returned to reading the rest of the newspaper with one hand, the other entwined in Malfoy's.

***0***

The morning of Malfoy's birthday donned brightly and eagerly. At breakfast, Malfoy's mother said something that had for some reason ran a crack through Harry's heart and pained him.

"I remember the day you were to be born as vividly as if it was yesterday." Malfoy's mother looked aside out of the window into the morning sun, arms folded on the table. "This sun shines like the day on which I conceived you. It's a very beautiful day."

Suddenly Harry couldn't swallow the omelette in his mouth. No matter how hard his throat worked, the swollen lump in it persisted.

"Too hot?" whispered Hermione, who mistook his emotion as pain from burning his tongue from the tea.

"Are you going to be at the dinner?" Malfoy asked. "You're going to cramp my style."

"Something I am very much aware of. Don't worry. I'll be long gone before your friends arrive. We'll just hang around during the day as we did last year. Perhaps even go to Winox Lane this time. Happy birthday, my son."

As promised, Malfoy and his mother spent much of the day together. Draco expressly requested for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to remain in their rooms or dusting the library during this time. So they could only guess what they were doing. Perhaps they took a stroll in the greenhouse, played with the animals, opened Malfoy's presents, or went to Winox Lane, wherever that was. What they were sure of was that in the library, it seemed even the portraits could sense that one of their family was celebrating their life. They were extra talkative.

"It is a promise, a bright promise that the Malfoys will once again rise," said one old man in a portrait above the rows of books.

Ron found great pleasure in hearing these words, which acknowledged that the Malfoy weren't in such a revered position as they were before.

At another site more portraits were talking amongst each other, at least about more academic matters.

"...But of course everyone considers him- or herself an authority on the human condition simply because they participate in the human race and are humans themselves. That's the fundamental flaw of the study of humanities. It has to make sweeping generalizations in order to maintain the scale of its scope since it usually deals with entire ages or a large place like a town. Sociology, anthropology, history, their little postulates and theories can only operate in the domain of academics. Outside, the world doesn't function like that, Rawlin!"

But of course, as obscured as Malfoy wanted them during the day, Malfoy had them front and centre at the birthday dinner nine hours later, not least to boast his domination over them and embarrass them in front of his friends.

Harry knew it was going to be a long night when he saw the figure leading the procession into the dining room and spotted a bush of blonde hair forced into many tight ringlets around a blockish, pug-like face.

Pansy Parkinson shrieked in delight at the sight of them. "Look at Potter and loyal company!"


	9. Mirage

**Chapter 10**

**Mirage**

"Ha! I can't believe this!" Pansy screeched. "So this is what you and the Dark Lord were discussing that day when you came to visit at Hogwarts. I guess the proof of ownership papers passed hands then." She lingered on their faces with a mixture of supreme disgust and delight before turning taking her seat along with the rest of Malfoy's friends.

Blaise Zabini seemed to look away from them with some effort as though he simply couldn't believe Harry Potter and his friends were sitting on the floor of Malfoy Manor as slaves of his friend.

"So what have you been doing all day?" he asked Malfoy.

"Hanging about with Mother, that's all," replied Malfoy, with feigned exhaustion. "You know the timetable by now. She insists on quality time picking out new Houdani outfits for me and silken robes. I lose count of the number of times I told her I don't need another Karvela shoe."

"You could always donate to Crabbe and Goyle here," Zabini suggested.

"I should spare them the torture of being overstretched in their monstrous and smelly feet and rather leave them in the pile with my other shoes. There's no offence in truth, I hope, Crabbe and Goyle."

"There's never mind, boss," the two chimed.

"Yes, and there wasn't a finer truth on this here Merlin's sweet earth," muttered Malfoy, at which point Blaise and Pansy snorted.

Pansy threw another of what seemed to be a trademark ugly expression to Crabbe and Goyle as she had to Harry, Ron, and Hermione that made her box nose scrunch up like a repulsive little hair ball. It didn't help her already pug-like face, and perhaps what gave her her face were years and years of making that ugly expression.

Harry knew little about Malfoy and Pansy's relationship except that they were never further than an arm's length away from each other during the Hogwarts days, but there was something expertly timed and evasive about the moment when Pansy was about to slither over to Malfoy, her face loosening from that supercilious squashed look of it to an even more hair-raising diplomatic and even seductive attempt, and Malfoy smoothly slinking past her as he said, "If you'll excuse me all, I need to freshen up and dress properly."

"But I see nothing wrong with you," said a short stringy little boy with dark-brown hair that sloped sideways with a kind of graceless flourish like that to the tip of wooden Dutch clogs.

"I second Theo. You look as gorgeous as always, hun," purred Pansy.

"I spent the entire day with Mother traipsing across Winox Lane and making unnecessary stops at her friends' houses. All that has left a fine layer of dust on my wear and skin. So if you'll please." Malfoy made his way unimpeded across the dining room. "Potter."

As whenever Uncle Vernon exhausted him with outdoor chores, Harry's knees led his body before his mind could contemplate exhaustion or embarrassment, as solid movement led and abstract emotions followed, as a sort of method to cope. He left Ron and Hermione to fend for themselves in a dining room full of Slytherins and followed Malfoy through the halls, watching the white-blond pair perched on the nape of an alabaster neck bounce with every step and click of a shoe.

They reached Malfoy's bedroom, so familiar to Harry it gave him a perfunctory and harmless fit of suffocation before he stood right between the faux window behind him and the queen-sized bed in the middle of the room. Malfoy astonished Harry as he headed through the left door which led to his bathroom. Malfoy was showering again?

Malfoy left Harry, under the cover of the running water of the shower, snorting and scoffing and sneering at the aristocratic lifestyle, which presumably dictated one had to shower twice a day, perhaps thrice on one's birthday; read 'high' literature such as _The Connoisseur's Construct_, Lobudaian poetry, and volumes of books written about one's family, as if it were a legendary dynasty, as if it were special in other ways besides the fact that it was stupendously rich, for Harry had never come across a Malfoy in his history books to merit such legend; and each room possess both an escritoire and a bookstand to pressure the children to put quill to parchment and hastily find their own unique writing style before they even approached puberty or gained a sense of who they were.

But of course this strict grooming is only natural in these families, at least in the Malfoys, Harry had much reason to suspect. And of course Malfoy was never entirely diligent, bright, or had a sense of commitment, Harry thought. Only that could explain why he hadn't been able to compete with Hermione in academic performance, reduced the calibre of his breed to the insult of commanding mindless cronies such as Crabbe and Goyle, and grow childish enough to play pranks on him, Harry, just because he was in his eyes undeservedly treated as more special than he – aristocratic pureblood – thought himself to be.

Harry heard the water stop running before the door opened a few seconds later and Malfoy padded into the room with one white towel around his waist, the other his hair, a gold chain hanging down a pale chest with double capital 'M' pendent hanging between the two hints of pectorals. Harry kept his gaze on the floor and watched spots of red flair in the toes and across the bottom of the pale feet as the floor exerted pressure onto them while Malfoy made his way over to Harry's side of the bed. He plonked down on the emerald duvet and threw himself against it, sighing tiredly – a tired sigh with which Harry was intimately familiar.

"I don't feel like this birthday party after all…"

Several moments of silence passed.

"What am I gonna wear, what am I gonna wear, what am I gonna wear…?" sighed Malfoy.

"You new clothes?" suggested Harry, as though it were obvious.

"Obviously I can't wear my new clothes. How corny would that be? No, I should saunter in there like it's any other normal day. Today's only special because I was born today a decade and a half ago – hardly an excuse to don my best clothes."

Malfoy gave another sigh before he dragged himself up off the bed, looked at Harry for a while with a dull face, and then took his wand from behind, apparently tucked in his towel, and waved it.

Harry for a second thought some pet dragon was going to fly out of the wardrobe only to see a string of clothing articles stream across the air. The items, as though choreographed, made a single loop in the air before stacking on top of each other in an orderly fashion next to Malfoy.

"Dress me."

Harry couldn't stop his shock from coming through his face as his mouth fell open. Fortunately it was all Malfoy could bear as he, eyes half-closed, fell back onto his duvet. He untied his towel and wiggled out of it before tossing it aside, leaving Harry with the full frontal sight of his thighs, the little of his butt crack that peeked through them, and his scrotum and penis sprawling across one thigh.

Harry allowed himself a moment to absorb the new order and regain his calm. He stood up and, realizing he couldn't stretch much time out of two metres, covered them and stalked across the room to the pile of clothes on the bed. Topmost lay a pair of navy satin socks. He took these, bunched up one – and trying not to stare at the pink, flaccid, tubular object of his horror – grabbed Malfoy's foot.

His determination to ignore Malfoy's penis provided the body part Harry would focus on with the utmost attention. Harry glued his eyes on Malfoy's foot, recalling the sole of this foot connecting with his teeth, and yet tracing with his eyes its every slope and curve, and its every vein and toe and nail. It was long, pale, as he knew it, and sculpted like the foot of a marble god. It was a beautiful foot. It probably never saw the outside of this house bare, cushioned from the world... Harry covered it and the other one.

He took a pair of black silk Barmees from the pile, pulled it over the two feet, the flawless shins, and covered the genitals and thighs after struggling slightly to pull them over Malfoy's arse which Malfoy hadn't bothered to raise from the bed. He put on the grey slacks next, ran the zip over the bulge of the genitals, slipped on a pair of black suede shoes with the name Karvela, est. 1455, Italy, written in gold across the beige inside padding, and covered the torso with a frilly peacock-blue shirt Harry thought might be trendy in a gay Muggle bar. But then again it wasn't Malfoy who was marvelling at the artistry of his own body.

After he finished dressing Malfoy he stood back. Malfoy stayed on the bed with his eyes closed for some few minutes before he sighed again and stood up.

"Right."

They journeyed down to the dining room where they found Pansy fiddling with some contraption on the table, Zabini, arms and legs crossed, talking with another boy who matched his thoughtless grace in his pose and the blasé flow of his speech, Crabbe and Goyle were scratching at the table and randomly bursting into laughter for no visible reason, and Theodore Nott – the stringy boy with the awkward, incomplete air – sat quietly in his chair starring through the window. Ron and Hermione sat against the wall trying to look everywhere but at the Slytherins, and so with a hungry speed latched onto the sight of Malfoy and Harry walking into the room.

Hermione gave Harry a stern and demanding stare.

"Nothing happened," Harry whispered, knowing Hermione always worried about him being alone with Malfoy and fearing his harm.

"Oh you're finally back," Zabini said to Malfoy.

"Merlin's corns. How do you work this thing, Draco?"

"Let me," Malfoy said, as he took the contraption from Pansy. A moment of fiddling with it later sound blared across the room. It wasn't anything like Harry would've thought his peers listened to in the Muggle world, for he thought the music was rather classical, in his own idea of what classical music was. But teenagers listening to classical music? He exchanged glances with Ron and Hermione. Ron had an expression akin to one he made in second year when he was hurling slugs onto the Quidditch pitch. Instead of looking green he looked pink, fit to explode in laughter.

Harry half knew why he fixed so much attention on Malfoy during the night, chatting with some of his friends when he wasn't belting out the pretentious sentiments offered by hosts and directing the evening, ordering Tibby to serve whatever part of the meal they were on (almost always dessert), but most importantly for some reason, deftly and kindly staving off advances by Pansy on numerous occasions.

His evasion couldn't last forever, however. Harry saw it coming: Malfoy's vigilance slackened with every increment of his drowsiness until he found a seat and stayed there for much of the evening to follow. He didn't find the strength to ward Pansy away as her thighs finally secured their prey and wrapped around Malfoy's waist and as Pansy came close to Malfoy and seemed to whisper soft nothings, Malfoy looking mildly entertained with droopy eyes looking up at the box-nosed face.

There was something sombre about Malfoy's own face, Harry thought. Wizzotini, his father's favourite wizard tenor, blared softly in the background, he was a fifteen-year-old boy spared the simplicity of being a school-going child but chosen to head his age-old family and play to the Dark Lord's tune together with the world, and he felt tired and woozy after nights of skating the edges of sleep, avoiding the monster that would surely find him at the centre of it, and every time he slipped into the centre, he was awaken by Potter's hands shaking him and opened his eyes to two bright green beacons of hope and safety that, so devastating how they pierced him that the Incubus stood not chance in the abundant presence of such purity and innocence and good.

What was a boy to want more than that? What did he, Draco, want more than a soul that was the antithesis of him, that actually cared for the next living soul he would not donate the least bit of mind to, a soul that weathered the harsh and searing forces of the fleshly world and was not abraded by it and tainted with cynicism and spite – the complete definition of every Malfoy he knew except for his mother and everything he knew to be? What more could anyone ask for to care for and protect a lazy, pale, slight boy whose hands never saw a day of work, whose feet never the outside bare, and whose entire psyche was designed to receive – reverence with his name, service by his elves and helpers, and all the luxuries Galleons could buy?

Harry watched with a morbid sort of interest as Pansy sucked at Malfoy's lips and as her fingers undid Malfoy's buckle, the very buckle Harry had done minutes ago. He saw her hand slip into his trousers, the very trousers he had put on, and touching the very penis he had touched with his lips and tongue. At this point, as Pansy finished her whispering into Malfoy's lips and began climbing off him, there exploded a sudden and most fierce desire to react. React in some way, do something between the two of them, do something to Malfoy. But Harry couldn't explain this explosive desire until the idea came with Pansy clutching at Draco's wrist and leading him off out of the dining room.

It was a desire to protect.

It blinded him from considering what others would think of him rising to his feet as Pansy and Malfoy disappeared out of the room, or looking at the inquisitive faces of his friend. Taken wholly by this one object, as though everything he had lived for and defined himself by in that moment was reduced to the simple object of shielding Draco from whatever he suspected Pansy's machinations were, he drifted quietly out of the room in the cover of bacchanal laughter and merriment. He followed the spectre of the peacock blue of Draco's silk shirt and the golden glint of the chain across his neck through seemingly romantically dimmed passageways as though Pansy had orchestrated it, as though she had chastened the flames in the torches and carefully selected the music everyone listened to – manufactured the mood, the moment. Now she would lead Draco to a petal-spangled bed where all manners of bodily rapture would ensue.

But before this they found a dull-lit alcove between two bracketed torches where Pansy saw it fit to be consumed with her desire and with eager hands pushed down Malfoy's pants, her skirt, and kissed him more forcefully. Draco's eyes were lost in the moment, and his motions seemed to take their lead from Pansy. But the moment they caught the glint of torchlight in a pair of green eyes, the cloudy complicity from Malfoy's eyes vanished in the space of a lightning flash. Pansy sensed the shift in the moment and threw her gaze over her shoulder to where Harry stood after he slid out of his hiding spot and revealed himself. Pansy, in disbelief such that she wasn't capable of glaring at Harry yet, seemed to whisper something to Malfoy before she adjusted her bra and pulled up her skirt.

"Let's go somewhere private," Pansy suggested, emphasizing the last word forcefully, eyes still wide in incredulity.

"Go away, Potter," Malfoy said.

There was something very hurtful about these words that Harry could not explain. And indeed they curbed almost heartlessly his strong desire to protect. So unable to explain his conflicting emotions to himself as one limb of his mind ran this way and the other stretched that way, backwards towards the party and Ron and Hermione, and forward towards Draco and Pansy, they culminated in the net result of Harry remaining where he stood, going neither way. His eyes did not sway from the corner around where Pansy and Draco slid, thinking, thinking, thinking… It wasn't until he had taken four steps towards the dining room, thinking of his stupidity to venture out here in the first place by order of his invisible emotions, that he felt a screaming panic in his gut, and very rigidly, he strode towards the corner.

And he discovered beyond it, a sight that shouldn't have been as… haunting as it was to him. Simply put, Draco and Pansy were having sex. Draco's hands were clutching at Pansy's waist as Pansy bounced up and down on his middle in a dark alcove. It was the first time Harry had seen people having sex outside of a television set or the frame of a page in a magazine, and certainly the first time he saw his peers – people of his own age group – having sex, as much as it was talked about and done at Hogwarts during those normal days. It was something inexplicable to witness, what was meant to be savoured in matrimony being enjoyed by a pair of teenagers, the naturalness of it, the baseness of it, the bestial air of it. It reduced the complexity of humanity to the basic process of bodily consumption, of animalistic sexual desire.

For a moment he stared at its process, at its hidden mechanics, at its ripple effects – the very motion of oscillation, up, down, up, down; the fluid, natural, rhythmical noise of flesh pounding on flesh. There was everything hideous about it to Harry. More hideous because he only had to imagine it because the unnatural ornamentations of clothes were in the way. There was nothing symphonic and beautiful about it as an expression of the engine of natural progression.

And there was everything evil about it and everything harmful about it to Malfoy as Harry saw his eyes darken and swirl either with lust or a dying something as Malfoy, with effort as though it could be a dying wish, whispered, very clearly, "Potter…" And thence came all the strength Harry needed to rush forward and rip Pansy Parkinson's flesh from Draco's.

"Leave him alone!" Harry shouted.

"What—pa...!" Pansy breathed, her eyes wide again. She looked behind her. "Are you mad? Go away, Potter! I can't believe this…!"

Harry stood there between Pansy and Malfoy, undecided, torn himself between the certainty of his purpose and whether Draco approved or not. He didn't hear any protest from behind him, however, a good thing. He turned to watch Malfoy hastily pulling up and doing his pants, looking breathless and flushed even in the dim light of the secretive corner of the manor.

"Draco, tell him!" Pansy screeched and cawed. But Draco remained standing behind Harry, precariously slanted against the wall, eyes drooping in exhaustion or the wake of wantonness.

"Draco…" breathed Pansy again, attempting to reach Draco by going around Harry, but Draco heaved himself with effort to his feet, encircled his arms around Harry's waist, and dropped his chin on Harry's shoulder.

"Go. Now."

It wasn't just Harry's imagination that his voice had a dangerous authority about it, for Pansy, with a shudder and just a second's hesitation, high-tailed it back to the dining room. With a last glance over her shoulder, one could have sworn she feared Harry would transform into a werewolf.

"Why did you do that?" Malfoy whispered against his neck from behind.

Harry swallowed as he gazed at the corner Pansy's skirt has just whipped around out of sight.

"You know why you did that?" Malfoy asked again, more forcefully.

Harry shook away from Malfoy's grip and began marching down the hallway.

"Where're you going?" Malfoy called.

Harry now felt an odd sense of emptiness, relief, and the absence of that gripping desire to protect, as though it had disappeared together with Pansy. Perhaps it in fact had been Pansy from whom Harry felt he wanted to protect Malfoy.

"Stop."

Really, there was no other moment during that day where his mindscape was clearest. He simply felt empty and obliged to nothing. He was content with falling back to the routine of being a slave under Malfoy, that new normal. A comfortable part of his mind from where now there stirred swirls of some intrusive compulsion…

"Potter, I said stop."

It was a return to that comforting regularly that had taken shape after a few days at Malfoy Manor after getting over the shock of being owned by Malfoy and accepting they were slaves, and taking the meals and orders from Tibby and the chores all as they came. And perhaps he was to take an order now…

"POTTER, STOP THIS INSTANT!"

And there it was. The truth. Harry had stopped before his own volition even allowed it. He felt himself panic as he heard the forceful footfalls behind him approach, but couldn't bring himself to take another step forward.

"I said, do you know why you stopped us?" Malfoy asked, his breathing audible in the dim hallway. Harry suddenly felt a body behind. He fell with it to the ground where the pair of hands turned him around and Malfoy lay on top of him, staring down at him, his eyes cloudy again, his speech broken and stilted with every ragged breath he took.

"I'll tell you why," Malfoy whispered into Harry's face. "A slave shall listen to orders. A slave shall protect its master from undue harm. And a slave shall not under any circumstances attempt to manumit itself, either by escape or suicide." Malfoy paused and blasted breath into Harry's face again. "That's why your knees turn buttery and boneless on my command. That's why you came when Pansy was seducing me. I suspect she wants my child to can marry into one of the richest families in Britain. I think she's the one who's been bewitching me all this time. To somehow weaken my inhibitions for tonight or to make herself more desirable to me. Given I don't feel the least bit infatuated with her since first-year end, I would guess it's the former." Malfoy glanced at the silver collar around Harry's neck. "And that's why you have that. I would be chained to her by my seed growing inside her. I'd be a dad, at fifteen. My life would be over. You, my slave, protected me as you should."

That might have been what he had seen dying in Malfoy's eyes when Pansy had been bouncing crazily up and down on him, perhaps – his freedom dying with the birth of his and Pansy's child. But there came with this the truth that his compulsion to protect came from it, that – and he must have known this all along – it was his collar that orchestrated his obedience of every command Malfoy had made of him – it wasn't Harry's acceptance of his fate during the comfortable lull between then and their first day at Malfoy Manor, shocked at their enslavement. It was all simply because of the collar around his neck. It was never his volition at work. Or his friends'. His screaming desire to protect Draco was never of his own design, but the collar's. Who was to say his unexpected admiration of Draco's body was his own? And so foreign his next words felt to him, who was to say they were his own?

"Is that all I am to you?"

Why? Why did he ask that?

Draco looked fit to burst with laughter. "Do you think you're more than that to me?"

"I'm not the only one hard here," replied Harry.

The mirthful twinkle in Draco's eyes died as he stared into Harry's green eyes. They stared into each other's eyes.

"What are you saying, Potter? You like me that way?"

"Then again it could be because of this collar I'm wearing."

"You're not tricking me into taking it off."

"I never asked you to."

"Then what are you asking then, Potter?"

"I never asked you anything."

Draco glared down at Harry.

"Then what are you saying?" he asked, with the pragmatic air that sought to cut through the immaterial clogging and get to the heart of the matter for the sanity of the both of them.

"I said I'm not the only one with a hard-on here," Harry repeated.

"You're suggesting I have a hard-on?"

"I feel you have a hard-on."

"You think I want you?"

"I never said I think anything of you."

"Potter, cut the bullshit and tell me if you have feelings for me so I can break your little heart and tell I'm not a poof and, as you just saw, I do skirts."

"Then why are you hard?"

"Maybe because you rudely interrupted me and Pansy shagging and I am still in the mood."

"You just told me you wanted to get away from her."

"I never said such a thing. I just said you protected me from her."

With every second the repartee proceeded between them, Harry felt himself letting go more and more of himself, falling, until he couldn't distinguish between his real feelings and those Draco's flesh seemingly forced on him: he didn't struggle against maintaining a clarity about his connection with Draco's flesh. He was so intimate with it – he had sucked Draco's penis, sucked his toes, seen him naked, dressed it, protected it. Was there anything he didn't know about it? So why should having an affinity for it be a huge leap from that? Why should his admiration of it be surprising?

He thought Draco was beautiful, a beauty that transcended gender. Was it a short step or a giant leap to desire it?

"Fine. I want you."

"And there's the truth," Draco said, smirking, as though he had won a victory, some battle of wills. "Why didn't you just say that from the beginning?"

"Would my answer be because of the collar or myself?"

Draco stared at him for a while. "Fair enough." Then he said, "Still. So sorry to disappoint. I don't do slaves, elves, or boys."

"Then get off me."

"Funnily enough, you're not the first bloke to want me... There must be something wrong with me – some signals I'm sending. Or I'm just simply that stunning."

Rather than give him the reason, Harry left Malfoy to fan his own vanity and save him the trouble of explanation.

"Maybe you should answer that."

"Like you said, you're stunning."

Draco looked tempted to be satisfied at his answer and be flattered for free, without the expense of knowing he was only flattered because he was a Malfoy, or because the flatterer salivated at their wealth and wanted to align him- or herself and pave the way for his or her future, as a wife or an oily-tongued family friend, or indeed because of the collar around his slave's neck.

"Stunning," Draco said. "That's it?"

Harry raised his eyebrows.

"Hardly incentive to shag you on this floor, is it?"

"I never suggested you—do that."

"But you want it."

"No."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"Your body."

"My-" Draco choked. "That's it?"

"That's it. You don't need me to like you or love you or anything," Harry said. Then, struck by something vaguely alarming, added, "Do you?"

Draco took a slight moment longer to reply. "Of course not," he scoffed supremely. "Why do I need love when all I want is a shag in this world? Love is maybe for when I'm older. Or cynical and need smoothening around the edges. I'll be middle-aged then probably."

"Then I don't need to love you. Just desire you," Harry replied. "By your logic, that's enough for you… right now, until you're middle-aged."

"Yes but this desire business is what I don't-"

"I wanna kiss you right now, okay?" Harry blurted out, frustrated by the growing rage of his erection and the parables they were speaking in. "That's what I'm about right now."

Draco started slightly with the strained confession like a child who had just broached the subject of sex with his friends and felt daring and giddy by it. Draco stared down at him, his shell-pink lips slightly agape, grey eyes – far from darkening and swirling in passion – stayed clear and clinical and calculative, but still silly. From a long line and an ancient family history, it must have been unfathomable for him to contemplate another boy's desire of him. Sure he had said he had some hints that some boys lusted after him, but he thought they lusted after his position in Slytherin, after his kinship, after his name and riches.

He found out early on in Hogwarts that the line between eager companionship and homoerotic desire was blurred at will instinctually. There were so many boys desperate to find themselves in his clan of friends, or just even something little more than an acquaintance, benefitting like Pansy and Blaise from his liberal shopping sprees, or walking around with the cool crowd, or being associated to one of the richest families in Wizarding history, that they would do almost anything to gain his affection, but within the simple bounds that they were only so strongly suggestive to him that the ruin on their reputations was eclipsed by their possible gains from their relationship with him. It was a mystery to him that perfectly and evidently heterosexual boys would stand to risk that ruin in the first place and momentarily define their sexuality more fluidly in his presence for the sake of their enrichment. That to him begged the question, what else were people capable of to enrich themselves?

"Would you do it?" Draco said, his eyes brightening, his words more a dare Harry would – beyond blurring the line of homoeroticism and desperate companionship – rub it from existence than a test of the truth of Harry's words of his desire.

"Would you want me to?" Harry asked, very nervously.

"What if I said yes?"

"I would."

"Do it."

"Have you said yes?"

"I'm not going to."

"Then I can't force myself on you."

"You won't be forcing yourself on me because should you do so the circumference of that collar around your neck will diminish more and more until you stop."

Harry had to a take a minute to understand this.

"Then why that didn't happen when we fought in your room after you kicked me?"

"Maybe you were too consumed with your rage you didn't feel it."

"If I won't be forcing myself on you then it means you want it."

Draco fell silent at this blindingly accurate logic. He stared down at Harry.

Harry looked up at Draco. He moved around slightly, with difficulty fighting Draco's scent, his closeness. It was so much he had accepted it in the vastness of its familiarity. That was why they lay where and how they lay. He found to be less hard work to accept than to block his nostrils and search for disgust inside him. He had finally given in, and some might see it as finally having been broken. It was as if the entire evening should be folded up from the moment he discovered the exquisite architecture of Malfoy's foot to now, after Pansy's aggressive advances, when he realized Malfoy wasn't built to be the fittest survivor or fittest with whom to mate. He was designed not to take care of, but to be taken care of, to be pampered, to be served – because that was what Draco knew best – that he was entitled to all of that, and he was everything Harry wanted to protect, because Draco was something of a complement, incomplete on his own, and desirous of everyone's compliments. Harry could be his everyone. He could be Everyman. Pansy couldn't be Everywoman.

"We can get out of here. All of us – you, me, Ron and Hermione. And your mother."

Draco looked down at Harry for a long time, confusion in his face. "I beg your pardon, Potter?"

"We can go," Harry repeated, "now. All of us. We don't have to stay here."

"And why would I want to run off with you?"

"You want to keep looking over your shoulder when Voldemort's power is growing?" Harry asked him, looking into Draco's grey eyes deeply.

"It's nothing demanding," Draco said, then added, with much more commitment, "And it's an honour to serve him."

"Right," Harry said shortly, making his disbelief plain to Draco, who opened his mouth to protest, but Harry cut him off. "You're a coward and both of us know it, Draco. So why do you want—I know you're afraid of him. Blimey, I'm afraid of him if I think too long on it. Don't you want to stop worrying if one day you'll find your mother on the floor?"

"The Dark Lord would never kill my mother," Draco rushed to say, frowning deeply at Harry as though as he spoke fighting with the image Harry invoked of his mother. "So long as we're loyal we'll be fine."

Harry's eyes softened and penetrated even more deeply Draco's silver ones. "No, Draco. If there's anything I can tell you, Voldemort doesn't have any rules. He can murder anyone, even the people who are loyal to him. He nearly killed Snape even though he realized it wasn't him betraying him. Voldemort would have killed him just for the bother of trying to find out who kept spoiling his plans."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Potter!" Draco fumed. "How do you know that?"

"Because I felt it," Harry answered. "I know what he feels like whenever he thinks of killing someone. I know how he feels just before he kills someone. Snape was this close to dying. I know."

Draco's lips trembled above, the brow rippling in listless confusion still. "But how do you know…?" But he seemed to answer himself, as his big eyes drifted to the scar on Harry's forehead.

"I'm asking you to come with me and Ron and Hermione. Otherwise we leave without you."

Absurdity Draco could handle better. "The manor is protected by layers and layers of wards. You won't make to the front gate!"

"Tell me, why do you want to stay here?" Harry asked him, very genuinely.

"Tell me this," Draco countered, the words trickling through his clenched jaw, breathing heavily, "how do you plan to make it past the front gate? Answer me that, Potter!"

"That's getting away from my question. I answered yours and now you answer mine."

"That's the thing," hissed Draco, "I don't have to answer yours because you are my slave! You're mine, you get it? I am not answerable to you! I don't have to want you! I already have you!"

"Then I should give you fair warning that I can escape anytime I want."

"And I should give you fair warning that should you attempt to escape that collar around your neck will grow narrower and narrower until you can't breathe!"

"Dumbledore can take care of that."

"And just how would Dumbledore take care of it?" Draco said, swelling in annoyance with Harry's calm voice.

"Because I think he's smarter than whoever came up with them."

"Dumbledore is a lot less smart than you think: exhibit A – Hagrid that giant crackpot and Dumbledore having him on the grounds even after his pet chicken attacked me!"

"Get over yourself, Draco. You're not at Hogwarts anymore. It's childish to still be bashing Dumbledore after all of this."

"Childi-" screeched Draco.

"Hermione went down Ron's throat because he was still thinking of you as the Malfoy that made pranks on me at school and swore at him and called his mother fat when you're a different Malfoy – should be a different Malfoy now. She told him to grow up. And I think you should too."

"Why do I have to take advice from a Mudblood?"

Harry ignored this tedious slight. "I know Dumbledore will take care of these collars. I know if we get to him everything will be all right. I know we can start from there."

Draco glared down at him, his brow furrowed with anger.

"Well you can forget about that because you're not getting to Dumbledore."

"I can, and I will."

"How then?" demanded Draco, humouring Harry.

"Did you hear what Snape said at the meeting? When he said Dumbledore's powerless when he's all alone, and that every person is removed from him? He said 'every person', and elves aren't considered persons to people in your circle, are they?"

Draco's body shook, either with curiosity or laughter. "An elf? Don't make laugh!"

"Dobby can Apparate in and out of these warded and magicked castle walls. I can call him in an instant and he will take us away."

Draco kept quiet. His mind seemed to be working as furiously as Voldemort's had during the meeting. "But why didn't you do it before, after all this time, summon the same elf my father banished?"

"Well," Harry replied, his tranquil manner infuriating Draco even more than the self-satisfied lilt of his words, "so we could spare you from being tortured by Voldemort after you lost us under your watch, and the rest of Britain because Hermione thought Voldemort would search us everywhere without stopping and sparing no one in his path."

Draco was silent. He then said, quietly, "You're lying. You would have done it a long time ago. You're talking bollocks. You wouldn't have… gone through what you went through just so you could spare your country from heartache and pain. Please!"

"And spare you. And what exactly have I gone through? Dusting books and feeding animals? Pleasuring you? All those things weren't the least bit hellacious. I think I'll take shining your knob any day over a Cruciatus Curse."

"How do you expect me to believe all that?" Draco blurted out, cheeks now even redder with more than just anger.

"Should I call him now?" Harry challenged.

Draco stared at him, breathing slightly uneasily. "You wouldn't dare," he said under his breath, feebly.

"Do-" Draco clamped Harry's mouth and bore his weight on it.

"I swear I'll kill you, Potter!" Draco breathed heavily for several moments before he said, in an act of admission that he believed Harry. "You can't leave! The Dark Lord will murder me! And my mother! My mother!"

Obviously with these last words Draco wanted to invoke some sympathy – even empathy – mentioning his mother. Harry raised his eyebrows to indicate he should be allowed to respond.

"Promise me you won't call him!" When Harry nodded, Draco removed his hands.

"Dobby."

_POP!_

Draco flew off Harry and landed on his back, his wide eyes peeking through his legs and fixed on his former elf as the announcement rang, "Harry Potter has called for Dobby, sir."

Harry picked himself up from the floor and faced the elf. "Dobby. Thanks for coming."

Dobby hadn't registered these words. He was standing very still in the passageway, his skinny legs shaking slightly, his head didn't move about but his eyes took in every inch of the hallway, and every inch of Draco's face.

"Master Draco…" Dobby whispered, in recognition. Draco had nothing to respond with to that, speechless. Dobby shook his head, trying to induce his exit from his trance. "Dobby—Dobby has no master, Dobby means. Dobby is a free elf, because of Harry Potter. And Dobby has answered to Harry's Potter summon."

"We can take your mother with," Harry told Draco. "We can all go. Voldemort won't find us. I know Dumbledore will make a plan, even if a lot of the Order is at Hogwarts. If we can just get to him, we'll have done a lot."

"I can't—Are you mad, Potter?" Draco spluttered, looking between him and the shivering elf. "I can't believe th—I can't just leave everything there and run off with you in some vague fit of infatuation mostly on your part."

"I'm not saying come with me just because of that," Harry argued, standing up. "I'm saying come and save yourself and your mother."

"And escape to the side that lost? No thanks!" Draco cried, gaining some composure, even as his lower lip wobbled with disbelief that he was having this conversation in the first place, and that his former servant was standing in front of him since he had last seen him three years previously.

"We haven't lost," Harry countered, rather sorely. "We just hit a snag-"

"A snag?" snorted Draco incredulously. "A snag? Voldemort just toppled the Indian Board of Magic, Potter!" Draco shouted, forgetting there was a birthday dinner two corners away. "The biggest and richest magical government in the world-!"

"He hasn't yet," Harry countered. "Just two local offices, hardly the heart of the government."

One of Draco's eyes managed to narrow in its wide disbelief. "You've been taking peeks at _The Herald_ while I was sleeping!"

"I couldn't just watch you sleep, could I?" Harry replied.

Draco stared at him, after glancing at Dobby. "Potter, you know what you're doing? I'll be killed! I'll be tortured for days and days if he comes back and finds you missing! You can't do this to me! I'm your master! I'm in control."

"That's the thing, Draco," Harry said, shaking his head, "you haven't ever been in control. That meeting should have shown you that. You fear Voldemort so you accommodate him in your house. You call making me pleasure you and giving me and my friends chores being in control? I'm leaving with Dobby and-"

"Dobby is so sorry to interrupt Harry Potter," Dobby began, wringing his hands as though tempted to iron them for punishment. "But Dobby is most regretful to tell Harry Potter that Professor Dumbledore has ordered Dobby not to remove Harry Potter from Master Draco—Draco Malfoy's authority, Dobby means."

Draco looked to have a heart attack. Before Harry could process these words in one motion Draco surged from the floor together with the finger that thrust into the air victoriously. "There!" he boomed.

Harry turned to Dobby, quiet for a moment, and then whispered, carefully, "Come again?"

Dobby writhed in discomfort, perhaps with stomach pains, perhaps with dread. "Professor Dumbledore has told Dobby to tell Harry Potter if he attempted to summon him that whatever Harry Potter does, he must not leave Malfoy Manor, and everything relies on everything appearing the same as ever."

"Everything relies on-" began Harry, frowning accusatorily at Dobby. "Hang on. That's not fair. That can't be right…"

Draco stuttered and spluttered as he pointed at Dobby and jumped from foot to foot, stumbling over his words in his elation, but eventually squeezing out, "That's the truth, that! Tell him!"

"Draco? You all right?" said a voice from beyond the hallway they stood in.

Dobby squeaked in panic. He turned quickly and apologetically to Harry and whispered, "Please don't' call Dobby again, Harry Potter. Dobby cannot stand disappointing Harry Potter. But Dobby must listen to Professor Dumbledore's order-"

"Orders my arse!" Harry exploded. "Look, Dobby! Whatever you and-"

"Draco, what's going on?" came Zabini's voice.

_POP!_

And Dobby disappeared. Harry's swore in a long sentence in Gobbledegook.

"Pansy's acting a bit offish since she came back from whatever you two were up to," Zabini's disembodied voice said.

"On the floor! NOW!" Draco shouted, just as his friend appeared in the hallway.

Harry's knees jerked and flew to find the ground. His mind was spinning, disappointment covering his heart.

"Can't blame her though," Zabini continued. "I hear Potter rudely interrupted your… relations."

Draco glared down at Potter, his mouth twitching and twisting, his breath coming fast and raggedly, vindication and happiness and an orgasm of ego exploding in his eyes and chest.

"Everything here is just fine, Blaise," Malfoy said. "Nothing but the status quo."

"Would you mind returning to the party?" Zabini asked.

"Perhaps it's time Mother took a vacation," Draco said, ignoring his friend. "I think it's time Potter and friends move out of their rooms to the dungeons."

Perhaps it was only after this point that Harry would find his meaning of enslavement. His bodily feelings for Malfoy were subject to their object's discretion, and Malfoy, in command of the collar around Harry's neck, never looked more motivated to use it thoroughly than now. After all, it was Harry who said he was never in control, and that his punishments were petty. It was time he changed that.

**END PART I**_  
_


	10. The Sombre, Unquenced & Pitied

**PART II**

**Chapter 11**

**The Sombre, the Unquenched & the Pitied**

For the life of her she could not figure out how the thing worked, or why she wanted to.

She stared the thing down in her hands, with a glint in her eyes proud enough not to let it make her swear at it aloud but stung by being fooled by something many times her own intelligence. For certainly not just any person's touch could make her face light up, nor could she see anything needle-like inserted into her, "charging" her up as either necessary or desirable. Her nostrils were flared delicately from the restrain she was exercising against flinging the thing aside out of sight, for she did not need the insult. No, she would not grant the thing such dignity as to find it lying on the floor in gracefully quiet inertia.

How Muggles managed to design it and why they bothered communicating with it was beyond her, and at this point she satisfied herself by travelling back to her Hogwarts-going days when she was almost always in the top two of her classes, finding certitude in her proven cleverness. But beyond her as well was why her Muggle escort wanted her to learn to use the "cell phone" because it would be fine if they talked when they saw each other. Perhaps her vibe had been a touch too strong. Perhaps she had lost some of the grace she exuded in her younger years that allowed her to make lesser men want to kill themselves just so she could look their way but suaver ones to die equals deaths in the gaffes she managed to make them perpetrate.

Either this or French men had more gall than most nations, and she has visited her fair share of the globe. Of course it was his fault.

If she could ever know how to use it, it would be of no use to her, for she had no overwhelming desire to contact Darry. Unlike him she was less interested (but perhaps not entirely uninterested) in having a relationship outside of that which will see that he makes her stay in Muggle France smooth and enjoyable, courtesy a clinking black satin sack presented to the French Prime Minister. But she certainly had not anticipated his advisor handing her a cell phone so they could have some pillow talk miles away from each other. Fortunately she had an inkling the device would not work while she was back at the villa, where she now raised her head and peered towards the horizon of the Celtic Sea.

She was not inclined to spend much of her time at the villa, for, apart from being in Wizarding France – a part of a Wizarding world in simmering unease with the waves of MAV testing, which were undignified at best and brutal at worst – it brought memories of her stay here together with Lucius, and Draco… Perhaps she could make another use for the phone – to call her son, back in Wiltshire. But it was surely impossible; though she did not know how calling with the device worked beyond entering Darry's number and holding it to her ear, Darry told her he had a copy of the device waiting for her call, implying the necessity that both parties needed devices, and Draco did not have a copy.

Being strongly advised to go on holiday by her son was something she had somewhat seen coming. It was simply a feature of a pattern, one – definite than ever before – that once one drew back from to look at it in its entirety spelled out her separation from the two leading men in her life. The destruction of her family was spelled out imminently in the moment Lucius stared at her rigidly before her bed, a mask in his hand – a mask she had not seen for fourteen years. She knew the fact in his words before he said them, and heard the footfalls of his boots heading towards the Apparition chamber. Before slipping into her slippers and heading to her study, her last thought was her son at Hogwarts, enjoying the tournament.

She still struggled with the anger, indignation, and disappointment at being removed from her house by her son even though it was not heavy-handed. The emotion in Draco's eyes as he explained he did not want to see his mother hurt did not fool her. It may have been true, but partly, for she had always known an ugly, nasty, and childishly vindictive side to her child. It looked harmless in the prevalence of such traits in other high families. It looked harmless in the face of a cute nipper setting embarrassing traps for Crabbe and Goyle. But it looked disturbing on a growing adolescent whose psychological architecture was patchy, immature, and in constant flux and one whom possessed a kind of pride inherited from but not lesser to his father's. She imagined, and knew, it looked dangerous as well in the eyes of his subjects.

The letter that removed the necessity to imagine it lay on the round marble table in front of her, taken from its place in her drawer by the sentiments one felt on New Year's Day, the first one she was spending without Draco.

_Dear Mother,_

_Happy New Year. I hope you're having a wonderful time at Cap Auger. Promise to collect a leaf from every tree there so we can finally complete our album!_

_It has been busy here back in Britain. People cannot seem to sit still, they are always talking. I thought I would also travel and escape the noise. I think I'm going to see America, for myself once and for all. I might even pay a visit to whoever runs their kind of ministry there and say hello._

_The slaves have been fine, if you're wondering, but I think too fine for too long. It is my opinion they need more discipline because they have shown themselves to be capable of disrespect to their master. I simply cannot turn a blind eye to that, Mother. I had to stamp my authority, but you would not let me do it effectively. I promise still that I am not making myself a pill too bitter to swallow for them, but there certainly is some swallowing happening._

_All my love_

_Dragon_

Narcissa let the letter fall onto the table and once again squinted at the horizon through the door, over the balcony. She stood up, padded across the room barefoot onto the balcony and leant against it. Her son's words were still respectful to his mother but nevertheless recently cognisant of his imagined authority, and, perhaps in the moment, drunk with it. It might have been real in the capacity of his lordship of the manor, but it withered in the face of the question of whether he had autonomy over his own life or another force had it in its hands.

Moments later she scrunched her eyes shut and bowed her head, as though praying or crippled by pain. But the source of the real pain was from how startlingly similar the path her son was taking was similar to that of his father, and look where it got him. She saw the death of her son, as hazily but as clearly as she saw her husband's.

Her fear for his life as he walked out with that mask in his hand towards his resurrected master, a master he was due to meet whose regard for Lucius was unknown and unpredictable. Fear for his life as the toll of his missions mounted on him. Finally, fear for his life as he lay there in their bedroom, she standing at the window staring across the sprawling garden of the Manor, and the both of them waiting for their son's return to be requested to do the unthinkable task of murdering his own father. Only now Narcissa did not know which faceless adversary was going to take her son's life.

She had been at the villa hours before, staring at the sea, so vast and blue its shadeless canvas collapsed its depth and reared it into a solid wall on which she painted her worries and joys. Now she found herself again at the same villa, staring at the same sea, as solidly reliable as a wall upon which the balcony door opened, its sight so pure it seemed incapable of deceiving her but only being the sublime truth of the pattern in the tapestry. All she had to do was draw back and trace the lines against the clarity of the solid blue of the unchanging sea before her.

Mr Donald Grassley was every man's man, in every respect of the phrase. He was also every woman's man, which explained the foolish pride clear as day in his wife's eyes as she bade him farewell for the day after giving him a kiss. Mrs Grassley had also grown a habit of lingering on the veranda and looking around the neighbourhood, with a beaming light in her face so profane it looked a little sickening.

However, it was not long before one satisfyingly noticed the light dim and lips stretch to one side of her face in jealous reproval at the woman next door blowing through the door in a skirt suit, as if its skirt somehow redeemed her from this slight against convention. The grey skirt billowed urgently across the lawn and hiked up her thighs (Mrs Grassley's lips drew sideward more severely) as her neighbour pulled up the garage door, jingling her keys loudly and pretentiously as only Brenda Myers could achieve.

Brenda took care to have enough graciousness to wave at her before disappearing in her garage to start the engine, to be followed seconds later by her husband as he slammed the door ("George! That's not a cab door!" Brenda could be heard chiding in a rather tired voice, after she opened her car door again). There was no set of children to precede or follow them.

Mrs Grassley, the muscles in her neck twitching even after so many years and still with the shadow of the diplomatic smile on her face, turned to her husband hiking on his jacket, opening his door, and throwing himself into the car. It seemed he had long ago foreswore attempts to squeeze himself into his car discreetly but had rather admitted to himself that he no longer possessed the finesse and balance of a young man, and his paunch did not allow him any nevertheless. Mrs Grassley swiftly hitched up her smile more decisively and waved serenely at the car taking off their driveway.

The smile lingered for several seconds, but Mrs Grassley could not pretend any longer to be pleased by the sight of a woman pulling out of the driveway in her own car while her husband followed, as if she felt herself entitled to stand amongst men as an equal, skirt suit and all. Mrs Grassley still could not master the sting of the sight after all these years. She, as always, remedied it with a healthy dose of the certainty of her place in the home, and she turned towards the house to make the children lunch.

It was easy to see by anyone that Mrs Grassley was not hard to figure out, and much less hard to fool. But perhaps what worked out for her was the immodest but not stupendous respect her husband had amassed.

Mr Grassley was liked by everyone within and out of earshot of their house. He was known as a diligent worker, an entertaining converser, a more-solid-than-usual acquaintance, and a reliable friend. Someone who whenever there was an accident, or a burning house, or a cat stuck in a tree, though the natural protocol with which to proceed was known by many, took the lead, and in doing so demonstrating a gifted, pragmatic genius.

For instance, ever since there was a suicide at the Keaton house, and Mr Grassley had sent two of the young bystanders to run to his home – one to fetch a bottle of his wife's vanilla essence and another to look for any nozzle spray bottle and empty it (even though his own son and daughter stood attendant beside their mother) – and burying the unbearable odour of decay under the pleasant aroma of vanilla as he sprayed it in every corner of the house, everyone and their distant relatives added the trick into their list of remedies, family secrets, and pools of general knowledge. One had the feeling they just waiting for a tragedy just to have their own moments of genius. They, however, did not appreciate the haunting connection to death thereafter made whenever they had a nose tickle of vanilla even from their favourite confections.

Or when a seventeen-year-old boy was knocked off his feet during the late afternoon rush home as he ran across the road to fetch his basketball. It was a curious and quietly frustrating sight for Mr Grassley to arrive at the scene and watch residents yapping over each other as they crowded around the injured boy, depriving him of room for air, some speaking into their trendy but no less bulky cell phones. Sometimes one would think the suburb was too rich for its own good. Literally.

Mr Grassley, himself a humble "rag to riches" story, ordered everyone to back away from the boy and, again, singled out some of the youngest bystanders to capitalize on their speed and energy. He sent them to find two pieces of wooden blocks or cardboard boxes, mutton cloth from his wife's tall cupboard, a razor, and a stapler. When the boys arrived with the items, he bestowed upon them a grateful smile, and told one to help him bandage the injured boy's leg. He threw a glance at his son and then called him over as well, almost as an afterthought. They wrapped up the boy's leg as tightly as they could with what they had, and later when the ambulance arrived the paramedics did a double-take at Mr Grassley and praised him repeatedly for the brilliance of his first aid. Mrs Grassley's face glowed with foolish pride.

Or, a less serious situation, when someone's drain was blocked and calling the plumber did not help because they were usually in for the long haul to milk from the rich as much money as they possibly could because they felt their clients had too much money anyway. Or claim that the drain needed special chemicals which needed to be brought in from a far-off branch of their shop. Though the money was not the question, the principle was. Or after some neighbours grew distrustful of plumbers after wizening up enough to figure out the plumbers' tactics – realizing that they were being charged $70 for the plumbers to simply reattach the washer to the rod – they began calling on Mr Grassley.

Mr Grassley taught them to open their toilets and reattach the washer. To use a vacuum cleaner to clear the shower drain of hair build-up a plunger would otherwise sometimes struggle to remove. And use a hooked rod made of hangers to slip through the window and fish up the key if a neighbour's child locked the door to go play with friends and threw the key back in in anticipation that he would lose it while he played but not realizing in that moment of excitement that the key would be required to open the door again.

Mr Grassley's Midwest humble beginnings, over-appreciation for the mundane, and patience for the needy threw into stark relief their falsehoods of diplomatic veneers and irreverence for wisdom that did not lead to a sizeable bulge in net worth. But, because he learned to speak in the dialect, danced with the gyrations of greed, grandiosity, and the need to have the latest technology first, not so much as to unsettle them and had managed to endear himself to many in the neighbourhood.

But they all saw how much better success looked in a suit of humility. Pity they knew just how ugly they were inside. They sought satisfaction – much like Mrs Grassley – in their unfailing belief that heroes were not allowed to be judged upon a spectrum of virtues and vices – only virtues. No, in their vocabularies, Mr Grassley was no hero – simply a slightly better version of themselves. A version soon to be updated to theirs. It was just a matter of time. Indeed their arms were wide open for him.

Yes, Mr Grassley was every man's man and every woman's man. But Mr Grassley did not actively aspire to be all this. He just wanted to be every boy's man.

The sordid parts of his mind rebooted as soon as he left the house – more precisely later when he stepped into his car, for the most part a private space – and again his conscience assumed a familiar face. It was textured by the constant calculations of mitigation and rationalizations – all solely connected to the attempts to redeem himself and find himself even just slightly comfortable in his skin, a feeling he had last felt in his innocent childhood. That he could find his innocence only in his childhood was the dirtiest slight to stain his life so far, he felt.

It disgusted him immensely to think that ever since his late teens he had always cherished this attraction for them, as if he were trying to make himself sound less guilty or vile; yes, a paedophilic teenager was a far less disturbing thing to hear than a paunchy man twinkling his eyes at young boys. Oh yes, he certainly felt at ease with himself then. He half had not and half anticipated that this attraction would follow him into the latter of his middle age. A paedophilic teenager would be looked at like someone easier to purify. But a fifty-eight-year-old man would be looked at like something stuck on the bowl of a toilet even water was unable to remove, something incapable of being cured, something that needed to be removed more forcibly with a tissue or brush. His immediate removal from society would be the only solution.

It disgusted him immensely to think that as he drove along Wolmera Street, his favourite for quite some time now, he looked for one particular red low-slung backpack among a legion of others, as if his singular attraction to one boy and not any who passed under his eyes redeemed him in any way. A futile attempt to reduce his paedophilia into a seemingly curable and isolated pathology.

More pathetically, he knew this attraction only had phases: sometimes he preferred blonds over auburns and blond again, the delicate and dainty over the suggestively masculine and petites again, the freckled over the dimpled and back to the freckled, the alabaster skins over the tanned and back to the pales. And he knew he would dismiss the (apparently) cutest sandaled toes and deepest brunette cap under the (apparently) prettiest nose and eyes he had (apparently) ever seen for a far prettier boy according to his fickle fancy the minute he should appear. Every boy and every defence he attempted to build was a temporary state as he had always known it.

It repulsed him that he had to resort to a shaky resolve to maintain the arrangement of his children catching the bus rather than dropping them off at school, as if bathing in the squalor of his own mind around his children as he ogled at their schoolmates were some artificial moral low he had created. It was in fact a low within a low, a low within such decadence that it assumed the proportions that rendered the act of falling in space – even if it had gravity – meaningless: space is so vast one simply cannot fall; where would one fall to? More space? One does not, effectively, even move, but floats; every day he floated in the brown scum of his bathwater (he was adverse to the shower).

But however temporary his fixation on the boy was, that fixation was as potent as any he had harboured for any other previous boy. He waited, for as long as he had for the past three weeks, fifteen minutes, tapping his steering wheel, and half-heartedly scouting for new boys to lust after because, of course, his conscience was invested in keeping his affairs consecutive and untangled: it felt more forgivable.

And, as usual, it was not long before his eye spotted him with such a talent that it seemed as naturally gifted as the eyesight of an eagle. Again for twenty, glorious seconds he lived and he glimpsed into the divine beauty of the boy, whose features always seemed slightly altered with each fresh take of his eyes despite the fact that he had dreamt of the boy for so long and in so many ways. Far from frustrating, this constant rediscovery of how the boy really looked was an inexhaustible pleasure. It was the (apparently) most exhilarating twenty seconds of his life. Again, he took off the block with his heart racing.

"The speech for next week, Dan. And you-"

"It's Don – or Donald, Elliot," Mr Grassley said, cutting across his secretary, his voice harsh and unforgiving. He ignored the papers that landed on his desk.

He preferred his colleagues and his wife call him Don. He liked the boys to call him Dan. His childhood friends called him Dan.

"Sorry," said Elliot impatiently, as if long used to the correction, which may have explained Mr Grassley's harsh tone. Or maybe not. "You also have an appointment today. It's—er…"

"What is it, Mr Secretary?" asked Mr Grassley, as he flipped open his laptop. He then all but disappeared as he bent low behind his desk to reach for his suitcase, emerging seconds later with a floppy disk.

Elliot rolled his eyes. "I'm not your secretary," he sighed. "I'm your PA. I thought you will have learned that now after nine years. We say postal officer, not postman. Human resource manager, not recruiter. PA, not secretary."

"Whatever blows your skirt and the rest of it," Mr Grassley replied vaguely. The Windows 95 logo appeared and gave him a deflated thrill of superiority to those still stuck with the previous version. He had inserted the floppy and began browsing through some of his favourite pictures. "It's been nine years? Huh. How time flies… Nine years, what I would do with one… What appointment is this now, Elliot?"

"Er, hang on. I had it here yesterday…" Elliot muttered, frowning into his diary as he ran through it. "Ah, yes. Here it is. Almost thought I was Delusional Jaymore. But in another way he's a godsend to us right now, I daresay; nothing like a democrat that can't keep his clothes on; Bill's set for at least a month. Right. An appointment in a few minutes in fact, with a certain Mr Severus Snape. I swear this penchant for alliteration is getting out of control. Making your child's name an alliteration like some detergent slogan? Isn't that taking things a bit too far?" he scoffed.

"Snape? Is he right?" Mr Grassley asked, without looking up from a picture of a young boy, perhaps eleven, penetrating his friend and smirking childishly.

"Never heard of him…" Elliot murmured. Forehead still creased, he paged through his diary, perhaps looking for another instance of the name. He returned to the appointment and seemed to read the rest of it as he went on, "Preservatist seeking private audience…" Elliot's frown grew more severe at the words he had written as he recoiled from his diary. "Can't figure out when I wrote this down… Preservatist? He's definitely not a rightwinger."

"The hell is a Preservatist? Who is this guy?" Mr Grassley finally looked up to his PA. "Let me see."

"It just says Severus Snape, Preservatist seeking an audience with the Senator," Elliot sniffed.

"Give it here," commanded Mr Grassley.

Elliot's reluctance to give up his diary seemed to be that of a man about to give up a vital, powerful part of himself, like his manhood.

Mr Grassley took the diary and squinted at the near horizontal squiggles.

"Severus Snape… Never heard of him. Well, we'll see when he gets here."

There was a clearing of a throat in the room. Mr Grassley reflexively looked up at Elliot, who had also quickly turned his gaze onto Mr Grassley. They realized in the exact same moment that neither of them had cleared their throats. Elliot peered over his shoulder towards the door, but no one stood in its frame and had found it decent to announce his presence so. When there came a second noise, a cough this time, Elliot, in all his spindly, flamingo-like form, slid to the side of the table and steadied himself with it.

"What building was this House first?" Mr Grassley enquired.

Elliot snorted rather nervously, his sharp olive eyes darting across the walls of the office. "I'm afraid you won't find any legend here of this building built on a morgue like Oprah's studio. No, no. No such legend exists here… No such grand ironies here…"

There was another cough from somewhere inside the room. Mr Grassley became rather fixed his in his chair, and Elliot's eyes had bulged at the portrait of FDR scratching his temple, turning in his chair, and preparing to make an announcement.

"The Minister of Wizarding Britain wishes for an audience," declared the portrait.

"Wizar-" spluttered Elliot. "I beg your pardon?"

Roosevelt bowed his head to fix his disapproving stare more squarely on Elliot, who flushed.

"The Minister of Wizarding Britain would like to see the Senator. I believe that is the gentlemen behind you."

"Of-of course, Mr President," Elliot gasped, even as he slid further away and tucked himself behind the side of the desk.

Mr Grassley had been quiet all along. Never in his mind would he have envisioned a day that he heard from a speaking oil painting of Franklin Roosevelt that the Minister of Wizarding Britain was due to meet him any minute now. Dizzy with disbelief, he mustered all the courage he could to form his response to his hallucination: he stacked up the papers Elliot had handed him earlier and made himself look busy. A moment later the papers flew into the air along with Mr Grassley's feet and floated onto the floor after the fireplace had surged with green heat. Out it stepped a dark figure.

"Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus…" Elliot was rapping out a prayer furiously under his breath as his huge eyes fixed on the line of cloaked figures his boss' fireplace was spitting out. Behind him Mr Grassley had scrambled to his feet and was clutching the wall behind him for balance, his jaw still on the floor among the papers.

"You have—You have no right intruding into my office," were the first gasping words of Mr Grassley, as he sort of limped around his table, apparently seized by more courage than he had earlier shown.

Elliot now stood squarely behind the desk, arms nearly tucked behind him, his form slightly shaking, and his eyes roaming around the strange attire of the new people in the office.

"What are you doing here in my office?" Mr Grassley demanded, before the line of figures arranged themselves. They, all dressed in dark robes, seemed to bubble forward and spew and retract like simmering ore before a space was formed in the middle from which one figure emerged and came forward. And Mr Grassley felt the thundering of his heart, caught the sight so rapidly that he thought he knew it was going to happen: he spotted a sliver of a tiny striped suit behind the main figure. It was a split second before it emerged into full view, but the height of that suit was instantly recognizable to Mr Grassley, whose current fancy remained petite boys.

But the deep, slow, menacing voice of the main figure snapped Mr Grassley's eyes away from Draco to a sallow hook-nosed face. But not for long, as he could not but could not fight to resist snapping back to the young teenager in a black striped suit, a pair of what looked like crocodile-skin shoes peeking from under the legs, and three barely visible black buttons of the folded arms leading the eyes to the most delicious pair of pale, delicate hands which any man could ever hope would caress him.

"Mr Grassley, I would like for us to make this visit short," Snape said, looking down at the man in front of him. "It is our understanding you wield a significant amount of influence among your peers and other members in the Congress. And I am sure, Senator…"

Snape stressed the name to regain the man's attention after it went wondering to the backside of Draco, who had left Snape's side, strutted across the room, and picked himself up onto Mr Grassley's table; Mr Grassley's lips went white.

"…You'd prefer a bloodless coercion, so please, do pick up that foaming device and delicately communicate to very member of the House of Representatives and the Senate you believe you can sway your desire to see the Secretary of State deposed and replaced by a Pius Thicknesse, for whom you will vouch."

"You're mad!" Mr Grassley barked. "Who the bloody hell are you people?" His astonishment was however so great it managed to remove his eyes from Draco and again run them down the men's strange clothing. "First it's FDR's painting speaking, then a mob of—Are those wands?"

"Of particular importance would be…" Snape continued, before another cloaked figure stepped up and produced a scroll. His voice sounded rather boyish to Mr Grassley.

"Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, and John McCain."

With every name uttered by the cloaked figure, more lines sketched Mr Grassley's frown. He quickly threw a glance at his PA, who stood enthralled by the scene in front of him. He looked back at Snape, who stared back at him quietly. He quietly making his way to his seat, dropped himself into it, and rested his hands on his table.

With the corner of his eye he caught the silvery beam of the sheet of platinum-blond hair lying against a black jacket, and a hand held up to let the boy's lips close around his fingers to trim his nails, all in an express will to seem nonchalant. Yes, he was familiar with that adorable brand of naivety from adolescents. But he was acting no different; he too was trying to regain control of the situation by appearing imposing behind his desk.

"Here in the United States we don't yield to threats, Mr Snape is it?" Mr Grassley declared, apparently picking up on the British accents of the intruders.

"Then consider it while you yield to this," Snape replied. "Draco."

Draco looked up at Snape and stared at his expressionless face for a moment before he glanced at Mr Grassley. He looked back to Snape, a nail still hanging on one wet middle finger. He uncrossed his legs and scooted off the table, walked around it, and drew his wand. Elliot's head whipped around as if looking for somewhere to dive into for his safety.

"Young man, what are you doing?" Mr Grassley demanded, as he lent away from the stick – knowing exactly what it was. "Get that thing—Stop pointing that thing at me, godammit! Clarkson!"

"Daddy! I mean—Excuse me, young man! Do you know who you're pointing that thing at?"

"Draco, any moment now," chided Snape. "You took your father's life. This is hardly homework."

"_Silencio,_" said one Death Brother, as he waved his wand in the air.

"Very good, Mr Felton. You learn fast," Snape drawled.

Before Draco could make up his mind, as he seemed to be trying to do, Mr Grassley lunged off his chair and was diving before orange spell-light ripped out of Draco's wand. Though Mr Grassley landed on top of Draco as he took them to the floor he did not enjoy the velvety push against his own flesh of his small body as a pain beyond any he could imagine stole the breath in his lungs and flung it out his mouth as a howl.

"Donald!" Elliot shouted in alarm as he saw his boss thrashing on the floor. "Young man, have you any idea what you're doing?"

"_Finite Incantatem!_" Draco shouted, as he kicked out until he was back on his feet. The man stopped writhing, his breath raspy, much like the rattling breath of a Dementor.

"Oh my God," Elliot was saying, as he rushed over to Mr Grassley. "Donald, are you all right?"

"You'll need to learn as fast as Mr Felton here, Draco," Snape advised, his black pits for eyes as dead as ever, but he had approached Draco at an intimate distance. "It's easier to cast spells against your peers. But that is fairly useless in a world controlled by grownups. You need to learn that you are now bigger than them. You have the power. Understand?"

Draco nodded, keeping his eyes on Snape, who nodded back and rounded the table halfway.

"Mr Grassley, are you now in a better position to oblige us?" he asked.

Elliot was helping Mr Grassley in his chair. Mr Grassley was waving his arms wildly and dreamily, his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, chest heaving. Elliot whipped out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the drool running down Mr Grassley's chin. It took several minutes before Mr Grassley's breathing normalized as he sat still in his chair, his hands and the muscles in his neck twitching violently.

"Mr Grassley," Snape drawled.

Mr Grassley remained relatively still for another few seconds before, slowly, he raised his head slightly, staring into Snape from under his forehead, and, voice still rattling, said, "America does not dance to the tune of terrorists."

"Ah," said Snape, as he began striding back to his original position. He eyed a Death Eater, who, as if acting upon a wordless order, moved out of the pack and approached the table. "Draco."

Draco threw a curse over his shoulder from where he sat on the table, before the piercing scream of the man rented the air. He quickly muttered the counter-spell and resumed inspecting his cuticles.

"Do you still feel the same, Mr Grassley?" Snape enquired, his back to Mr Grassley, the silky upstroke of his lilt telling of a vicious satisfaction on his part.

The sound of the screaming was replaced with more heavy breathing.

Hunched over his desk, his assistant's hand clamped around his shoulder, Mr Grassley again looked up from under his forehead at the greasy curtain of hair ahead of him. For rather longer than an instant his eyes then darted to the cashmere-suit-clad bum curving against his desk an arm and a half away from him. Anticipating his murder in his own office, he was determined to quench every desire for a boy he had ever harboured. A life filled with orgasms induced by images in magazines and videos in front of a computer was half a life. It was time to live. And he refused to believe this beautiful creation resting its bum on his table could ever take a life.

"Hurting me is not gonna help you," Mr Grassley gasped, resuming his glare on Snape. "I am a man who wears his country's colours on his sleeve."

"_Crucio._"

Snape's left hand twitched. He glanced over his shoulder.

"_Finite Incantatem._"

"I beg to know why you imagine that I am threatening your country, Mr Grassley. The patriotic talk is rather overdone and presumptuous. But yes, it seems to be a behaviour rampant even across Wizarding America. You people seem to have a compulsion to qualify all your arguments with the name of your country. Granted, your methods are concise and effective, but they lack flavour. I for one despise your potions. They flood our markets with flat generics with no other interesting properties but are strictly manufactured to perfection. It's almost unnatural. It's a colourless kind of efficiency of a colourless country."

The Death Brother who had walked over to the table slammed the receiver in front of Mr Grassley.

"Your answer will have to wait. Now, we must hurry with our dealings." Snape turned around to face Mr Grassley again. "You will pick up the foam and do as I requested. I haven't the luxury to wait any longer."

Mr Grassley had closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing, his shaking arms still bracing him against the table. His hand reached for the rest of the device and brought it into arm's length. But the next second he flung it across his desk, pinning his glare on Snape again with even hotter fire.

"Is that a no?" Snape asked.

"It's a phone," Mr Grassley managed to squeeze out.

Snape raised his eyebrow. "Noted." And Mr Grassley sprung across his desk and threw his arms around Draco, who screamed at the top of his lungs.

Snape looked tired. "Plan B," he harrumphed. He turned on his heel and headed for the fireplace, muttering, "Draco, what is it with you and old men…?"

"_Imperio!_" the Death Brother shouted, after which the spell hit Mr Grassley squarely on his spine and he stopped molesting Draco. The Death Brother looked up at Elliot, who stared back into his eyes. One was just about able to register the soft jerk of Elliot's head sideways in silent entreaty.

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

There was another eruption of laughter from the table towards the back of the tavern. A man with a turban leaning over the counter with a tankard in his hand glanced over his shoulder, eyeing the boisterous patrons at the back.

"They're an amused bunch surely over there," he remarked. "They're really entertained by the beer." He had a jaunty, fruity voice which sounded capable of capering around and ahead of a conversation. It sounded like it bore all the energy and dexterity of an over-eager and precocious eleven-year-old desirous of proving himself competent in talking among grownups.

"Indeed," the bartender replied, in a grainy but no less fruity a voice than the one which preceded it. He spoke as he wiped a glass with a thick, grimy cloth that could pass for a fabric sash. "They've been at it for a while now. That man in the middle can never get enough drinks in him. Hold on, my friend, I'll be with you now."

The bartender left his customer shaking his head and smiling into his tankard as he went to serve another customer.

The table which was the subject of their quandary rattled again with laughter as the one man in the middle scratched his shining hooked nose in mischief. A row of yellow teeth could be seen peeking through his grin.

"But, alas, they never believe me until I show them the roadmap on my knee," the man was saying. The men around him wiped tears out their eyes. One of them, even as loud and drunk as he was, kept his words very polite as he asked for another round. No more than a minute later six more foaming tankards dripped beer on the table.

"There it is, my friend. There it is," praised the man that ordered. His voice sounded much younger and even fruiter than the pair at the counter.

As the drinks were distributed, the man in the centre of attention asked, "So tell me, my friends – onto serious matters – how did you experience the bombings?"

"The bombings?" said the one who had ordered. He enquired as if he were left breathless by the speed with which his fellow drinker had changed subjects. "You're asking of the bombings in Baitadi and, er, what's that other name? There's another office taken out in some other place. But they're far from here; I only heard about it. The Death Eaters, you know, You-Know-Who's people, were trying to get some information on the Indian government."

"Yes, I read something like that too," muttered the centre man.

"But it's a fool's quest to try to destroy the Indian government," said a drunk patron on the centre man's left. "They don't understand how we do things here. Merlin is with us. He'll keep the chests of our treasures safe. We trust in him more than the West does. He'll favour us more in the end." He began humming a sombre, rather sobering tune. The effect was immediate upon the crowd.

"Aaye," protested another man around the table, after several minutes of song, "we're spoiling the beer on sadness now. What kind?"

Meanwhile the man in the centre of the table spotted a patron at another table reading a newspaper.

"Do you want to read the paper?" asked the loud man. At times the bounce of his youth and the bendy intonations of his voice became rather grating to the hook-nosed man.

"No, that's not necessary, Aziz," replied the man, rather embarrassed.

But Aziz went over and again spoke to the reader of the newspaper in the politest tone ever that made it dangerously easy for any foreigner to underestimate him, as with many around the bar, and possibly beyond its walls. The reader, amazingly, obliged with a smile and handed the paper over. Aziz returned to the table and handed the centre man the paper.

"There you go, my friend. He didn't mind at all."

"Ah," hissed the man in delight, as he gave the paper a cursory glance, his face breaking into a wide smile. "Nothing like the feel of a fearless and objective paper in your hand – quite the rarity nowadays."

"Don't worry, my friend. This side of Magical India is not afraid of anyone," Aziz boasted, trying to frown as if serious, but the corners of his mouth were bursting wide with mirth. "They can tell you how we did the four previous premiers. Scandal after scandal! Hey, my Merlin! We're not afraid of calling a spade a spade! Don't you wonder why they call them premier-rovers? Mr Premier-Rover Gordhan is next to go soon after his scandal. There'll be one, don't worry. Wait, you."

The table burst into raucous laughter once more. The man holding the newspaper gradually disappeared under the table's renewed merry conversation about scandalous politicians, and too did his yellow grin as it faded while his eyes made their way down the front page.

**MAV Testing for 'Your Own Good'**

_With new department unveiled, Ministry urges citizens to submit themselves for blood testing before crackdown_

Barkha Sardesai, Chandra Singh & Spooner Langley

NEWLY appointed Minister for Magic Severus Snape has appealed to all witches and wizards to go for Magical Ancestry Verification testing, saying it will lead to a more harmonious citizenry.

"The time to bring to light those who have purported to be of our creed has come. No longer will Muggles, half-bloods, and Squibs languish comfortably in their skins knowing they are well concealed by how deep their roots penetrate the soil of our country. Britain has waited a long while to exhale," the Minister said, to stuttering applause. He was speaking at a public press conference at the Village Square hosted by the Ministry.

The call for testing is part of an initiative led by a new division in the Ministry specifically tasked with the rolling-out of MAV tests across the country: the Department of Magical Integrity. The new department as already set off on fulfilling its mandate, having reached several towns and villages.

Minister Snape said the Ministry, via the Department of Magical Integrity, was undertaking a consensus to find the makeup of the country's population and assured non-pureblood folk they were in no dangers of being ejected from Wizarding Britain or their possessions taken.

"For the better of the country and the promotion of the harmony of its citizenry, submit yourself to testing at the Ministry. It's for your own good," he said, falling short of calling the operation a purge. He added that if citizens failed to get themselves tested, for "the greater good the Ministry will come to the citizens".

Details remain sketchy of the exact process of the testing. However, there have been several reported cases of intimidation in mainly rural areas across Britain, including Hithergale, St Hedwig's, Crockertown, and Budleigh Babberton, where the arm of the law barely reached in previous dispensations. Minister officials maintained that these incidents were only in cases where citizens became unreasonable and defensive upon inquiry of their magical statuses before administering the test.

"People think it's a basis of humiliation for them, which is totally unnecessary," said Lox Winston, previously Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement but has since been reshuffled into the new Department of Magical Integrity as its head. He outright rubbished surfacing claims that villagers were tortured.

Known for his blunt tongue and fearless impartiality, Winston's seeming cowing by the new regime was taken as a serious blow by many. Winston had a talent of chastising the Ministry and even his own department (Law Enforcement) if it stepped out of line or did not satisfy its Statutory mandate, a situation which became increasingly frequent after the retirement of acclaimed ex-Auror Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody.

Minister Snape stepped up to take office after the sudden death of the previous Minister, Lucius Malfoy. Consequently several measures undertaken by Malfoy threatening to reverse the current economic system of the country to one of feudalism so cherished by the aristocracy lost legs. Malfoy owned several vast stretches of land across Scotland, Ireland, England, and even France that would have seen him and other old families regaining the economic stronghold. Snape has instead approached the job circumspectly, focussing mainly on warming relations with foreign nations, including Muggles ones.

[additional reporting by SPAM (Scottish Press Association of Magic)]

The room was dark save for small crescents of light seeping through the barred openings in the wall primitively made to serve as windows. In addition, torchlight from several blazing torches lining the circumference of the dungeon threw into relief three manacled figures lying against the grimy walls. Two stood on a patina of hay centimetres apart but both yards from the third figure, which sat alone on the other side of the dungeon. A person stood in front of the seated figure, hips cocked sideways.

"You're the most pathetic eyesore I've ever seen in my life!" Pansy Parkinson cackled at Harry below her. "Merlin, I didn't think you could top that moment when you were sitting there with your friends on the floor! But I find you here covered in your own vomit and crying your eyes out. Merlin's corns. After everything, after you lost, don't you at least hate yourself now, Potter?"

Harry did not answer. Neither did he look up at the girl. He kept his gaze in the hay next to him. Besides, it took all he had not to swallow. Being consciously watchful of his throbbing throat made the task that much more difficult. If only he could forget about it and act naturally. But he could not. He did not know if he ever could forget.

"Get the fuck away from him, Pansy!" roared Ron.

"Shut your cakehole, Weasley!" Parkinson shouted back. "I'm trying to talk to your boyfriend over here!"

Long used to the homosexual slight as a result of being close friends, Ron looked furiously on beside Hermione at the mop of blonde ringlets.

"Can't you see he doesn't want to talk, never mind to you?" Hermione yelled.

"Come on, it can't be that bad, Potter," Parkinson laughed viciously. She kicked at his feet and sneered at Harry but could not enjoy the taunts so much, as he was hardly responsive. "You've been round here a while before. Remember Hogwarts? Isn't it the same? Or is it different? I'd never know. Maybe it's smaller."

"The ugly cow won't get away from him," Ron hissed.

Hermione exhaled through her nostrils while her lips pressed upon each other in a familiar sort of way.

"Pansy, why aren't you off with Draco to America?" she asked suddenly. "I've heard it's a wonderful place for a holiday. Why leave you here in charge of us?"

"Draco's not in America on holiday, you daft bitch!" Pansy snapped, spinning around, and with rather more severity in her voice than usual. Her cheeks flushed as an almost petulant snarl grew on her face. "He's on some mission for the Dark Lord with the others. Of course I couldn't come."

"So he left you, to look after us," added Hermione, dropping the loft of her words at the end to affect a sad note in her tone.

"I know what you're trying to do and it's really pathetic!" Pansy shouted from across the room. But this was all she could say, for she turned around and kicked at Harry's foot again like a dead carcass.

Unlike Ron and Hermione, Harry's robe had been untied open and left him exposed; and unlike Ron and Hermione, he had been sitting on the floor, for days.

"How come your hero over here lost his voice?" Parkinson asked, almost breathlessly. She bent her knees to get a closer look at Harry. "Did you bite your tongue off when Draco was Cruciating you, Potter? Did you enjoy that?" Again, she was speaking fast but had lost her breathlessness, but clearly trying to forget Hermione's words.

Nostrils flared in disgust, Parkinson leaned closer into Harry as if by this she would find the answer she was looking for in his eyes, but Harry continued his deadpan stare at the ground. She turned her eyes on Harry's chest and traced it to the dried vomit that had run down to his groin, pooling there almost colourlessly, but with a tinge of green – mucous green. Parkinson also took in the fading pink of Harry's eyes, the moisture around them, and the tell-tale tracks of dried tears along his cheeks. She also noted Harry's engorged, bright-red lips, and looked again at the congealed mucous whose path was broken by Harry's pubic hair.

"Potter," began Parkinson, and for the first time there was a tiny note of sympathy and horror in her voice towards Harry, "what was Draco doing to you?"


	11. Pathetic

**Chapter 12**

**Pathetic**

"Your boyfriend's a sick creep, that's what!" Ron shouted.

Pansy said nothing and turned her attention back on Harry as though Ron had stated a truism or something typical of him. Her expression of haughty curiosity turned to one of disgust again as she roamed her eyes over Harry.

"I'm sure Potter deserved it," she said. Then she turned back around and asked, "How come he hasn't done anything to the two of you?"

Ron gave a loud snort.

"Because your boyfriend's obsessed with Harry! Now that I've thought about it, he's been obsessed with Harry the very moment they met! Can I ask, have you two shagged?"

The change in complexion of Pansy's skin was evidently visible even from the other side of the dungeon as she stood in shock. Her dropping jaw also could have been hard to spot.

"Shut up! Who the hell d'you think you are, Weasley?" she screamed, as she stomped towards him and Hermione and drew her wand. "Where do you get off asking questions like that?"

Ron gave a noise of surprise. "Shittin'ell, I knew it. The fuck is a bleedin' faggot," he said, more to Hermione than Pansy. "Think about it. He's never fucked a girl in his life-"

"What makes you think you know Draco's never fucked a girl in his life?" Pansy shouted. "He's fucked loads of other girls…!" She blinked profusely at the end of her words, her chin quivering.

Ron was only too quick to oblige the hanging question. "Except you?"

"He's—he's…" Pansy's breath was catching with indignation, almost preventing her from speaking. "He said he's saving me for marriage! I'm the ultimate woman he wants to be with for the rest of his life! I don't care if he messes around with cheap sluts throwing themselves at him before then. I'll be part of the family!"

Ron scoffed and stared at her in silence. "And you believed that?" he blurted out, as he looked her up and down, almost as if reassessing her I. Q.

"I think that excuse is rather thin myself," Hermione harrumphed, in a level voice as if talking to herself, but slightly louder than usual. She thought 'vivacious' was a euphemism for something else, as it was a term once used by Rita Skeeter to describe Pansy. "I mean, he would probably want to sample what's he going to get in the future, boys being boys-" Ron frowned. "-and he's the heir of an ancient family of Galleonaires. I think I'd be trying things left, right and centre to try and get him to love me-"

"Of course I'm trying to do that, you Mudblood!" Pansy shouted at her furiously, her blond ringlets quivering on her head. "What d'you think I've been trying to do all this time?"

Pansy then seemed to realize exactly what she had just revealed. Still white from Ron's intimate question, her eyes had widened as she waited to defend herself against the next thing from Ron or Hermione.

"I still find it hard to believe Malfoy ever fucked a skirt in his life," Ron remarked, while Hermione's eyes had narrowed in thoughtfulness at Pansy's words. "Maybe a few blokes."

"Draco is not gay!" Pansy said.

"You wouldn't say that if you'd been here a few minutes before you came," Ron harrumphed.

"What was he doing with Potter then?" Pansy asked, half-shouting, but her curiosity had tempered her.

Pansy had barely finished her question when they all felt a deep vibration in their stomachs. Pansy and Ron looked into each other's eyes.

"I guess you'll find out for yourself," Ron spat, his voice dripping bitter bile. He stared with sympathy at Harry lying on the floor with his manacled hands raised above his head. "Unless he kicks you out before he starts, like he left just after you came; he can't seem to stand being in the same room as you."

"Ron, that's enough," Hermione whispered through the corner of her lips. "You're going to push her over."

Pansy said nothing back at Hermione and seemed satisfied to keep quiet. Her nostrils were flared after an expression of determination took over her face, whether it was to remain calm or prove Ron wrong. They all remained in silence as they heard Malfoy's progress towards them until the great wooden doors began to slide open with loud groans and admitted him inside.

Wand already in hand, Malfoy's eyes darted to Harry first before they landed on Ron and Hermione on the opposite side of the dungeon. Needless of words Ron swore at him just with the dirty look on his face while Pansy made her way over to him. Hermione kept her gaze at Malfoy steady and stale.

"Draco," Pansy cooed, as she embraced him. She evidently could not help a glance in Ron's direction but swiftly began walking besides him towards Harry. Malfoy said nothing to her until they reached him.

"Have they been good?" he asked her.

"Most of them," replied Pansy, as she threw a sneer over her shoulder at Ron.

"Oh Weasel was giving you problems? Potter…"

"Nothing I'm not taking care of," Pansy replied. She ran her hand down Malfoy's gelled hair. "What were you doing in America?"

"You know I can't answer that, Pansy," Malfoy responded impatiently.

"You want to talk upstairs then?" she asked delicately, her caressing of his neck and shoulder almost apologetic.

"No," Malfoy replied, rather bluntly. "I want to stay with Potter here. We haven't finished our bonding."

There was a loud and sudden clink of metal: Malfoy and Pansy peered behind them at Ron struggling in his manacles, a snarl of fury on his face. Malfoy gave a small smirk reserved for only his enjoyment and not meant to be necessarily visible to Ron to react further upon. He turned back around to Harry.

"Potter, look at me."

And for the first time since Pansy had arrived, Harry animated at once and lifted his head tirelessly to gaze into Malfoy's eyes, whereupon Pansy's eyes widened slightly, fighting against a haunted look on her face. She burst into laughter and stopped suddenly, her lips trying to form words but stumbling as she remained, if anything, stunned. But only for a moment.

"It's good to know you're still alive, Potter," she jeered. Then she giggled into Malfoy's ear, almost crawling over him. "What did you do to him, Dracy? He was acting like a vegetable when I was here."

Malfoy merely snorted. "Do you want Tibby to escort you out?" he asked her.

Pansy's face crumbled. She lifted her chin in an attempt at haughty dispassion as she retracted her limbs from Malfoy. "Yeah," she replied quietly.

"Tibby."

_POP!_

"Tibby is being glad to serve Mast Malfoy," the elf squeaked.

"Escort Pansy out, will you?"

"Tibby is being-"

"Oh shut up, you brainless shitsack!" Pansy snapped, as she marched towards the doors, leaving Tibby behind with a raised hand that had been ready to take hers. Hermione gave a wan smirk of satisfaction. "I have a test to prepare for anyway," Pansy tossed behind her.

"Pansy," Malfoy called out.

Pansy stopped at the door, spun around, and stood quietly expectantly. She appeared slightly embarrassed of her behaviour.

Malfoy strode over to her. He hugged her before pulling off and saying, "I'll see you on Friday, yeah?"

"Yeah," Pansy said, in a low, doleful voice. She turned around, ignored Tibby, and exited the dungeon. Meanwhile Malfoy was looking down on Harry, who was still looking up at him expressionlessly.

"Malfoy, I swear if you…" breathed Ron hotly. "Can't you see he's just…? Just leave him alone, all right?"

"Aren't you a little presumptuous, Weasley?" Malfoy said, a smile in his voice, staring at the red-haired boy over his shoulder.

Ron kept Malfoy's gaze as he strained rather than leaned forward against the manacles. "You know you're a sick fuck, right?" Malfoy cocked his head sideways. "Just look at you…" Ron scanned the fitted striped suit down and up again. "Harry's had enough, all right, Malfoy?"

"That's not for you to decide, now is it, Weasley?" Malfoy rejoined, turning away from Harry, who dropped his eyes from the back of Malfoy's slicked hair to nod appreciatively at Ron. He tried to will as much saliva as possible to gather in his mouth and swallowed painfully a few times to moisten his throat.

"Where've you been? Banding around with your fellow Death Eaters and that snake of yours, eh? Off to America, were you? For what? I hear the scenery is shittier than London."

Malfoy's face had paled to appear whiter than usual at the insult to his master.

"They were Death Brothers," he responded, more calmly than he looked, "not Death Eaters. There was only one-"

"Oh those little blokes we saw around the table," said Ron, remembering. "They did look our ages. I was wondering."

"The Dark Lord has more important things to do than twisting the arm of a politician."

"Oh shame, so he threw that particular lowly task to you and those Death Brothers then," Ron drawled. "Oh and that one Death Eater."

Malfoy made a soft noise of disbelief. "Severus is the highest-ranking Death Eater there is, you git. He's the Dark Lord's right-hand man."

"Right," Ron said shortly. "And what are you?"

Malfoy stared at him quietly for a few moments, and Ron could not tell if it were out of indignation, embarrassment, or incredulity, or all of the above.

"I don't need to answer that. I don't need to be talking to you, either." With that, Malfoy spun back around and strode towards Harry, the hay crunching under his dragon-hide shoots.

"Nothing, that's what!" Ron yelled across the room. "Nothing!"

"Ron!" Hermione hissed, again through the side of her mouth. But Ron was in full flight, the crack of his simmering anger unstoppable, like a whip already snapped.

"Think you can come here and feel powerful. It's a tiny world here, ain't it? Why don't you go try and get respect out there in the real world. Why don't you go suck Voldy's dick off. You don't scare us, you pale, spineless bitch."

"Ron, you mustn't!" Hermione screeched, but it was too late as Malfoy had raised his wand.

"_Expulso!_"

It was Ron's saving grace that he had time to prepare for the curse as it travelled almost in slow motion from one end of the dungeon towards him. His freckles stood out in the blue-white light of the curse as he ducked his head and the spell gouged the wall behind him, leaving a whole the size of a beach ball over his head. He closed his eyes as chunks of rock fell onto him and shook crumbles out of his hair.

"You want to test me, Weasley?"

"I haven't started," Ron retorted. And he drew breath. "You really have a nerve-"

"Shut up," Malfoy snapped, cutting across him. "I don't need to hear you talk."

"You really have a nerve coming in and looking big with your little wand," Ron ploughed on recklessly, "when you can't even answer what you are to Voldemort."

Hermione stared at Ron open-mouthed. A warm colour rose up her cheeks. Behind Malfoy, Harry was staring wordlessly at Ron, but a trace of pride was barely visible in his blank face.

"Your dead dad would be so proud of everything you've accomplished. Even Snape, your buddy, had the heart to tell you you're not doing shit, that he expected better of you. What actually can you get right?"

For a split second Malfoy looked ready to throw another dangerous spell at Ron. But then, with a huff of fury, spun back around and stomped towards Harry as he unbuckled his pants.

Seeing this, Ron shouted, "Malfoy!"

"You want to keep talking, Weasley, eh?" Malfoy said, pushing down his trousers. Below him, Harry's chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and his legs were moving restlessly against the floor, scattering the hay there.

"MALFOY!" Ron bellowed. His face had gone an explosive scarlet.

"Here, on behalf of your friend, Potter," Malfoy said quietly, as he wrapped a hand around the crown of Harry's head and with the other forced his mouth open, feeding it his penis. "You know what'll happen if you bite."

Harry was hyperventilating. His hands were fisted and wrists tensed against his manacles, his one leg had bended off the hay, eyes closed.

"Don't worry, I'll get it there in a minute," Malfoy whispered reassuringly, of course speaking of his growing erection.

"MALFOY!" Ron shouted. "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!"

Harry made a familiar gagging noise, a sweet sound to Malfoy's ears. Harry's head shot backwards against Malfoy's hand, and his throat bulged, threatening to deliver his vomit into his mouth.

"There you go," Malfoy breathed, with a loving caress in his voice. The hand behind Harry's head forced him back into Malfoy's groin, where Harry made another gagging noise and scrunched his face.

"Malfoy, for fuck's sakes, man!" Ron screamed, his voice now breaking with emotion, "leave him alone!"

Malfoy looked over his shoulder as he thrust back and forth into Harry's mouth.

"Keep talking, Weasley."

Ron screamed incoherently and fought against his binds.

"Ron! Stop it! You're hurting yourself!" Hermione cried at him, as she stared at the drop of blood dripping from under his manacle. Ron gave that arm a cursory glance before resuming his near-demonic glare at Malfoy's back, below which the pale cheeks of his buttocks glowed like golden buns in the torchlight, narrowing as they tensed with effort in his forward thrusts and rounding plumply as he pulled out like two conjoined moons.

"You realize this makes you a pillow-biting faggot, right, Malfoy?" Ron yelled, nearly in tears. His teasing words had the ring of those of someone clutching at straws, a final swipe before collapsing on the ring floor.

"A mouth is a mouth, Weasley," Malfoy replied, his voice slightly slurring with lust. "It has no sex, or a face. Right, Potter? Come on, Potter, you can take it."

Frowning hard, legs kicking frantically like he was trying to keep afloat, Harry tried to turn his head away but the hand behind it and the other under his chin jerked and made him engulf that all too familiar thing, now a weapon, used to intimidate and threaten.

"Malfoy…" Harry moaned around his penis. "Please…"

"Come on, Potter… Shut up…"

Without withdrawing from Harry's mouth, Malfoy kicked his pants completely off, torchlight throwing soft light onto the pale, slender legs like two glazed breadsticks.

There came a few moments of silence in which from behind Malfoy seemed to have relented in answer to Harry's pleas. But Malfoy in fact had parked the furthest into Harry's mouth as he could, holding his member still against the velvety wall of Harry's throat.

"Oh fuck…" mewled Malfoy, in so high a voice it sound like a song of pleasure. His thighs quaked as Harry's legs began to kick most violently and as he looked the closet he had ever looked to vomiting. But then suddenly, with the clapping noise of a loud wet cough, a voluminous white, bubbly stream of mucous hurled out of his mouth, drenched Malfoy's penis, and dripped off Harry's chin onto his chest, sliding down along the faint tracks of the previous load that Pansy had seen. Malfoy withdrew with his face screwed up in revulsion. He waved his wand and the mucous on his penis and Harry's face disappeared. And he delved inside once more.

"Come on, Potter, you can do it…" Malfoy cooed at Harry's crying face. The way he looked from down there… Harry's nose bending against his abdomen as he entered to the hilt in his mouth, those few instances when Harry's eyes shot up to him to beseech his mercy, lengthening his face, his cheeks hollowing, making it look so innocent… sent an addictive thrill of power through Draco's body. He slowed his pace and slid in and out smoothly, forward and backwards across Harry's tongue, touching the back of his throat with every thrust.

It felt to Harry like Malfoy was stabbing his throat with each thrust. He closed his eyes again, pinching more tears out the corner their corners, as he realized begging would not relieve him of this torture. Closed his eyes against the revolting sight of his spit gathering and foaming across Malfoy's length, against the feeling of it dripping down his chin, against the tap of Malfoy's scrotum against his chin, against the squishing, clucking noises of battered saliva inside his mouth…

"Look at me!" he heard Malfoy command, and his eyes flew open. Malfoy withdrew from his mouth, spat on him, and slapped him across the face. He then stuffed his penis quickly back inside. After a few more lusty grunts, again he made sure to, agonizingly slowly, approach the furthest point he could reach in Harry's mouth before he gave a long, singing moan that sent a shiver down Harry's body and shot his seed down Harry's throat.

"Oh yeah… Ah yeah… Come on…" Malfoy withdrew again, banged his head against the wall in front of him as though to waken himself, and climbed over Harry, forcing his face into the warm and musky underside between his legs. Malfoy threw his head back and sighed, weaving his hands through Harry's hair almost lovingly…

"Swallow my balls, swallow them…" And his hands went from softly caressing to a demanding grip against the back of Harry's head as he ground his face into his groin. "Kiss them, yeah…"

Behind them, Ron had hung his head, staring at the hay below him, a teardrop hanging from the end of his nose.

"Look at me…"

Malfoy pulled Harry off and stared at him. He spat into his face once more, commanded, "Look at me!" again as Harry closed his eyes reflexively, and as he intended, enjoyed the face of a humiliated hero, staring into him, the eyes of someone absolutely defeated. He spat in his face again and smeared the bubbly blob over Harry's face, carefully avoiding the lower part. He threw Harry's head backwards, stepped back, and smirked at the sight in front of him for a final time: the underside of Harry's chin as Harry stared at the ceiling of the dungeon, his chin soaked in saliva and semen, mucous running down his torso, over his pubic hair, and between his legs.

Malfoy exhaled deeply again, throwing his head back and closed his eyes. He sniffed, opened his eyes, and waved his wand at his groin, which was cleaned.

"Finished are you, Malfoy?" Ron asked. He sounded quite calm. "Satisfied?"

Malfoy glanced at him briefly to give him a flat look.

"Fuck you, Malfoy…"

But Ron's mouth hadn't moved. Malfoy turned back to Harry, who sat on the floor glaring up at him, a fire still burning in his eyes. Malfoy's lips trembled.

"What did you say?" Malfoy asked, his face threatening to break into a wild grin. He prowled slowly – half-dressed and all – towards Harry.

"I said…" Harry began, taking a deep breath, "…fuck you." He spat on the floor, but it was more a means to clear his mouth than a gesture of disrespect.

Malfoy's thin legs carried him across the distance between him and Harry. He had crossed his arms, and his mouth was hanging slightly open in wonder at Harry's temerity.

"Fuck me?"

Harry didn't deign to nod. His chest rose and fell slowly and deeply.

Malfoy stared into Harry's face for a few moments. "Say it to my face."

"Fuck you."

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. He raised his wand, to which Harry's eyes darted, but he quickly trained them back on Malfoy's silvery ones.

"You don't scare me, Malfoy," Harry said quietly. "What are you going to do with it?"

He had to look undefeated in front of his friends.

"Do I really not scare you, Potter?" Malfoy asked, imitating Snape's dangerous lilt in his voice. "Answer me."

Harry quietened. His green eyes clouded for a moment and his lips trembled before, as if drawing the words from deeper inside, his mind's arms shaking with the effort to plumb them up to his lips, fighting against those which were trying to be wrenched from him, said, "Yes."

"Really, Potter?" Malfoy breathed. But he lost the menacing nuances in his expression as it became one of crude aggression, blunted even further by frustration. "Think I won't hurt you some more?"

"You can't hurt me," Harry spat, at which point a muscle jumped in Malfoy's neck. "Like Ron said, what can you do?"

"I can torture you!" Malfoy snarled.

"You? An Unforgivable?" Harry said, green eyes widened in half amusement and double astonishment. "Dream on."

"_Crucio!_"

The pain seemed to hit before the spell reached him. Harry screamed at the top of his lungs as his muscles felt like they were being wrenched from their bones, as his body contorted awkwardly and arced at an almost impossible curve off the wall.

"Draco…!" Harry cried.

Malfoy stopped the spell, exultation resplendent in his face. "Say I don't scare you!"

But Harry sunk against the wall and gasped, his chest rising and falling rapidly, the muscles in his thighs twitching. His eyes had bulged with shock that Malfoy was capable of performing the Cruciatus Curse.

"How do you feel now, Potter?" Malfoy yelled, his voice high, thin, and shaking. Harry thought his features seemed for the moment much more angular and carved: handsome though Malfoy was, Harry thought he looked quite ugly now in the moment of such pernicious satisfaction.

Harry drew his legs up into him but tried to keep his eyes fearlessly on Malfoy, who, seeing this, dived towards him. Malfoy grabbed his ankles, pulled his legs apart, and straddled him, breathing heavily himself. He clutched a handful of Harry's hair and pulled until he had Harry's chin almost vertical.

"How do you feel now, Potter?" Malfoy repeated, as he trained his wand at Harry's face.

Harry tried to calm his breathing and blinked several times, but his gaze did not waver from Malfoy's eyes. He thought how of much Malfoy and Justin Finch-Fletchley were alike: both were quite handsome in their own respects, but both had shown a potential for careless sabotage. Justin was the sweet-faced, freckled boy who had spread the rumour (which were truthful, unfortunately) of Harry being a Parseltongue, thereby bringing much uncomfortable suspicion on Harry. And Malfoy, he had too many wrongs to count… And it wouldn't do to miss Malfoy's question.

"Answer me… Your breath smells foul…!"

Again Harry's lips trembled as he fought against the words being wrenched from him. "Hot."

Malfoy snorted at him, but judging from the swift change in his expression from maliciously satisfied to quietly stunned, he had evidently thought Harry had been referring to his Cruciatus Curse warming him up like chicken rotating above a spitfire and not to the fact that he had grown an erection that was now pushing up in between Malfoy's legs: Malfoy seemed to be jolted as though Harry's thighs were exposed cables and jumped slightly off him. He gave a whoop of incredulous laughter.

"This is—this is brilliant…!" Malfoy exclaimed in ecstasy. "You sick poof…" He rose off Harry and stared down at him. "Oh yeah, that little chat we had a week back… I almost feel sorry for you, Potter. But I can't afford to feel sorry for my favourite slave. You must realize how pathetic you are, yeah?"

Indeed Harry did. …That the very same person to whom he was enslaved and to whose whims he was subject was also a source of physical attraction; he had told Malfoy as much five days ago. Yes, he did feel pathetic. But he still would not answer.

"Answer me."

"I'm pathetic."

"There you go. The truth shall set you free…" Malfoy's lips twitched slightly. The irony hanging between them was so sweet Malfoy could taste it should he care to lick the air. "You want me to leave you alone?"

Harry, after a moment, nodded.

Malfoy snorted again. "Beg me to leave you alone."

"Please leave me alone, Malfoy."

Malfoy stood silently for a few moments, savouring the plea like he had that sweet irony. He then sighed in satisfaction, and his eyes roamed over Harry's wet torso, whereupon his lips curled back. He turned away from him and grabbed his pants.

"Another day, another orgasm, Potter," Malfoy said, even as Harry's penis pulsed at the sight of those slender, wheaten stalks slipping into the pants, the crease between the two buns disappearing as they were covered in black. A click told him that the belt had secured the pants. Malfoy ran his hands over his sleek hair, straightened up, sighed, and made to head for the door.

Ahead of him, Ron spat in his direction, a look of revulsion twisting his features. Behind him he heard, "I really like it when you let your hair hang loose. It's really sexy."

Malfoy turned around, rather slowly, to face Harry, who smiled into his face and quirked his eyebrows. Malfoy held those eyes for a moment, and then he headed for the door.

Harry grinned and laughed rather at himself as the doors groaned shut, for the truth of his words were so unbearable he could do nothing else but laugh.

Yes, he did feel pathetic.

It was several minutes after the great doors had shut Malfoy out of sight.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," Ron sniffed. "I don't why he thinks it's fun… I don't know… The sick fuck… He'll pay for this…"

"It's okay, Ron," Harry soothed quietly.

"That was so-" began Hermione.

"No it's not okay!" Ron shouted, cutting across her. "It's not! He can't do that to you! It's evil! It's… unfathomable…! I mean, is that what they do to the Muggles and half-bloods they catch? Voldemort's people?"

Neither Harry nor Hermione answered him as they let the silence wash over them. Ron studied the caked trail of blood on his arm from his wrists to his elbow.

"You said Voldemort," Harry observed, after a moment. Though the width of the dungeon was considerable, it was also so quiet that their voices could carry to the other side with ease.

Ron stared at Harry from across the dungeon before he broke into a shy grin. He looked away from the tiny speck of white that was Harry's toothy grin back and set his eyes on Hermione, who also smiled bashfully and looked away quickly.

"Don't worry, Ron, he won't get at me – I won't let him," vowed Harry, shaking his head determinedly as he stared at the small dot of Ron's face. He raised his chin and pulled his neck, straining against the collar around it. "He won't have me. He'll never have me. He'll have my control, but he won't have my soul. I promise you."

Harry knew Ron needed those words more than he did.

"Thanks, mate."

When Ron glanced aside at Hermione she saw her fit to burst into a tearful episode.

"You boys…!" she said, in a low squeal, as a tear fell down her cheeks and she sniffed. Both boys, even though they were still taken aback by how fast he had changed emotions as she had smiled not less than five seconds before, knew how much she desired to hug them at that point. They both looked down at the hay longingly.

"We just have to hang on!" Hermione mumbled through her tears, as her bound hands could not wipe them away. "He'll get bored of it. Just hang on, Harry…"

At the words, Harry dipped his head further to scrutinize the hay more closely. Despite himself, there was a rather huge part of him that was bitter Ron and Hermione were not suffering, maybe not exactly as he was, but they were not at all. This bitterness had been festering quietly for days, it gave it power only when he dwelled on it, and with each day it grew harder not to be resentful, and harder to summon a compulsion to expel its cancerous and insidious influence. But today, in that moment, he tried again, and closed his eyes.

"I love you guys."

Hermione looked up at him and sniffed.

"We love you too, Harry," she said, urgently and desperately, smiling at the meek form sitting on the ground.

Harry nodded and closed his eyes to absorb those words, let them awash over him… but there was still something lacking…

"I love you too, Harry."

The words were spoken without hurry but bore a mellow, steady, rich meaningfulness. And Harry lacked no more.

"I love you too, Ron."

Several quiet seconds passed as Harry studied Ron's face: Ron was clearly mustering his courage to speak.

"You know I really don't mind if he does it to me, Harry. I'll do it for you."

Harry smiled at Ron's talent to change a solemn moment into one of comedy.

"It's okay, Ron. I can handle it. Thanks for the offer!"

Ron snorted.

"I wasn't actually serious, you know."

"Uh-huh," said Harry, nodding dismissively. They both grinned.

"What flavour is it?" Ron asked. "Vanilla Vice?"

Harry shook his head, his stomach rumbling with the reminder of the Fortesquean delicacy.

"Fur of ferret."

Slowly, one by one, they fell into a stomach-paining fit of laughter they were unable to contain for a long while. Even Tibby's sudden but regular appearance in the dungeon with a loud _POP_ did not halt them. If anything, it made it worse. As Tibby dawdled towards Harry, who was wiping his tears away with his shoulder, she looked around at the hilarity and her face closed off: she appeared to have gone to a place in her mind reserved for moments such as these when her masters would mock and laugh at her, a place reserved to be visited during the cruellest moments of humanity. She might have thought this one was one such moment.

A few chuckles racked Harry's body as Tibby inspected the iron bands binding his wrists against the wall. The amusement, however, vanished altogether as he stared at Tibby walking away, at her teacloth bearing the Malfoy insignia. Harry wondered when he would get his, for his humanity had been defaced and he was reduced to little more than what Tibby was.

After Tibby left, but not before checking Ron's and Hermione's manacles as well, Hermione sighed, "I would give anything for a new face."

"Yeah. Even Marietta Edgecombe's looking good now," Ron said, pulling a face.

There was a huff.

"I wonder, Ron," Hermione began, in a tone Ron and Harry knew, or Ron perhaps just a little more, "if we would still be friends after I gained weight."

"Maybe," Ron muttered. "Difference is she's ugly _and_ fat. She hasn't got much working for her, now does she?"

Hermione huffed incredulously again, shaking her head. "I can't believe you. It's like you didn't attend Hogwarts, the school of a man who once said – just two years ago – it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!"

"I never said she was born fat and ugly," Ron rebuffed breezily. "No child is born ugly, Hermione," he chided, as he shook his head magisterially. "And she might have gained the weight along the way."

Hermione's jaw dropped.

Ron's lips twitched. "Kidding?"

Hermione, for an instance, seemed she would not indulge him. But she could not help a smile from breaking widely on her face.

Ron winked at Harry, who chuckled as he realized what Ron had just done.

"But please don't try it when if we ever end up married, and I' not sa-"

This time it was Harry's jaw to drop. He quickly glanced at Hermione, who snorted.

"Who said I was going to marry you, Ronald?" she blurted, cutting across him. She laughed at him. "That is so _hideously_ presumptuous!"

"I didn't—I—I wasn't saying I was going to marry you!" Ron gibbered. "I said if we were ever to-"

"Mate, give up!" Harry wheezed. "Give up…"

"No I really didn't mean—You didn't even let me finish my sentence and hear what I really wanted to say!" Ron fumed.

Ron could not enlist Harry in support of his case as Harry was adrift once more in hilarity, shaking his head at Ron's demanding glare.

"Yes," Ron continued ahead, leaving Harry and Hermione, "as we were saying, it would be really nice to see new faces."

"Not Edgecombe's though, yes?" Hermione suggested, lips trembling.

"I wasn't thinking of human faces particularly," Ron ground out, his words clipped angrily. "Perhaps Dobby's?"

"Oh, Dobby," Harry sniffed smilingly, before he could think.

_POP!_

And the elf appeared. And for the second time, Dobby was frozen where he stood.

"Dobby," Harry said in surprise, looking at the elf, but speaking in a level voice had never used with his best elf friend, "I wasn't meaning to call you."

But Dobby seemed unable to reply and only to stare at Harry, at his hands seemingly removed from his wrists by the iron bands, and at Harry's exposed and soiled nether region.

"Dobby… Dobby is so sorry, Harry Potter…" whispered the elf. But if he was shaken before he was certainly stupefied by Harry's next words.

"I don't need your sympathy, Dobby, or Dumbledore's."

"Harry Potter," Dobby said, again in so low a voice that Ron and Hermione were surely straining their ears to hear, "Dobby wasn't knowing about Harry Potter's… and…" Dobby turned his little to peek at Ron and Hermione, also bound, before he turned back to Harry and continued, "…his friends'… situation."

Harry snorted. "Situation," he said, with the perhaps unintended effect of spitting the words out at Dobby's feet.

"Dobby is—Dobby is..." But Dobby stopped himself before he could offer another apology as tears began welling in his golf-ball-sized eyes. "Dobby didn't know, Harry Potter!" And Dobby let loose, leaking a veritable fountain of tears on the ground. "Dobby must be punishing himself… Dobby…" Almost frantically, Dobby's washed eyes darted around the dungeon for something with which to hurt himself. Finding nothing, he sprinted headlong into the grimy wall against which Harry sat and tottered backwards as he rebounded with stars swirling around his head, dazed.

"Dobby, stop it!" Harry ordered, as Dobby shook his head and began to throw himself head first against the wall again. He did not care to see Dobby punish himself – he did not have the patience. "Stop it! Just go, all right! I wasn't calling you. It was Ron that made me."

"Oi, don't let him go that quick!" Ron said, with a rather vicious-sounding note in his voice. "Oi, Dobby, see what's happening now, eh? See what your precious Harry is going through? Malfoy's cleaning out his stomach 'cause you didn't want to save him!"

"Ron, you can't put a guilt trip on Dobby, he's innocent!" Hermione berated.

"Innocent my freckly arse!" Ron snarled. "He was here before, wasn't he? Harry told us. He must have seen the 'situation' then! No, Hermione, I'm not letting you do this; I'm not letting you give him a pass just 'cause he's an elf. He has a conscious, doesn't he? Isn't he accountable like human beings? You want them treated like human beings, right? Oi, dough face!"

"Ron!" Hermione shouted.

"Bugger me if I've lost my kindness with him, Hermione!" Ron screamed back. "But he should've done something to save Harry!"

"Ron, he said he got orders from Dumbledore!" Harry yelled, not without a new bitterness towards his former headmaster.

"So what?" Ron fumed, as Dobby shook in his six striped and multi-coloured socks. "Why does he have to listen to him to the letter? Can't he make up his own mind? You shouldn't have been going through this!"

Harry turned away from him and looked at Dobby, who was avoiding his eye. "Dobby, just go. Sorry I called you..." Harry felt his heart crack. "You did not have to see this…"

"Yeah and after you leave," Ron shouted at the elf, "make sure to tell Dumbledore you found his favourite student and only the world's most famous teenager happy and healthy!"

For a few moments, in the silence punctuated by Ron's heavy breathing, Dobby shook quietly in front of Harry, staring at the spot on the floor much like Harry had during Pansy's watch, and trying to master his hiccupping. A solitary tear dropped from his wrinkly chin, but by the time it fell onto the hay Dobby had gone.

There was a sharp crack that rented the air briefly as a figure appeared from thin air in front of a simple hut. The tall figure was hardly visible under the midnight as he was wrapped in dark, flowing robes and stood still where he had appeared moments before. The figure seemed to take in his surroundings before fixing his eyes at the garishly electric green thatch-roofed square hut in front of him. He took a few cautious steps towards it, his hesitance justified as the hut seemed to belong to the larger structure against which it leaned, this one an equally eye-watering ice-cream blue. But soon enough he was at the green hut's door, on which he rapped three times.

"I'll be but a second," called a voice from the other side of it. The man under the dark robes snorted.

The door clicked once and twice before it swung open, spilling soft light at the robed man's feet, and out poked a rather skinny, brown-skinned, and hook-nosed man wearing a turban on his head.

"In you go, Severus," the man said quietly, as he opened his door wider.

The man in the dark robes swept briskly inside without a word. As the other man shut the door behind him, Snape stumbled slightly and stopped a little further than halfway into the one-room hut, as if he had intended to stand in the middle of it but it was just so small he had overshot his aim.

The Indian man hissed and rubbed his hands as he trotted past Snape, who blinked only after the man had made it to the tea kettle whistling on a low table made up of stacks of tomato cases. Beside the kettle was a candle stick stuck onto a saucer by the melting wax, giving the only source of light in the room. Snape looked around: there were two mattresses lying on top of each other in a corner covered with a single but heavy-looking maroon blanket. Beside the slim pillow that rested at the head of the bed was another tomato crate with two horizontal wooden planks for shelves seemingly holding the man's affects. On top of the crate lay a radio.

"Charming," Snape drawled.

"Tea, Severus?" the Indian asked, as he poured into a mug while his weight sunk the makeshift bed. When Snape declined, the man frowned at his form. "You sure you don't want a seat? You may share my bed as you have observed I don't have any chairs – I've rather had as distinct and lengthy a lack of visitors as I have never had before in my life." The man lapsed into chuckles. He dropped two spoons of sugar from a sorry-looking metal cup that seemed to have been beaten into shape by any random Mr Singh walking down the street.

"I'd rather stand if you don't mind, Dumbledore," Snape said.

"Be my guest!" trilled the other man. He sipped his tea so humbly it was as though he were grateful for this one small pleasure, and his dark-brown eyes twinkled at Snape, who stared at his face quietly.

"You like my nose, Severus?" Dumbledore asked. "I modelled it after yours! I was always so envious! But I must still concede yours looks better by far still! It's nothing to marvel at as you surely are!"

Snape paused for a moment before he gave a practiced snort as though he had just heard a crude joke – or something that had been spoken like a joke – but did not wish to be so impolite as not to react to it, though he would rather have not. But such was one example of the occupational hazards encountered in the employ of Albus Dumbledore.

"It's a kind of magic irreplicable!" Dumbledore continued to praise Snape's nose. "How do achieve that stunning curve?"

Snape sighed impatiently, and Dumbledore squinted at his flaring nostrils.

"No, I certainly didn't put that into my calculations," he muttered. "Nothing a pinch of bat droppings cannot cure, I'm sure. You know they do have some remarkable qualities, bat droppings, at least according to the latest_ Potioneer's Dig_-"

"Dumbledore!" snapped Snape, who now seemed particularly vexed, "it may have escaped your brilliant mind but do I have a megalomaniac to deceive. I should think this meeting, thus, will not take long?"

"Forgive me, Severus," Dumbledore said quietly. "I was merely expressing my adoration for your nose. Vastly skilled as I am, I could not do a competent job at replicating it." When Dumbledore knew where to look and, as he had thought, spotted the thudding veins in Snape's temple, he desisted and became more obliging. "So what can you tell me, my boy?"

Snape's angry expression ebbed away quickly. He assumed a cold, business-like air.

"Your updates, you mean?"

"Yes, those. I live by them."

"The Dark Lord is closer than he has ever been to taking Wizarding America for his own. For the Muggle side, we have placed the very influential Senator Grassley under the Imperius Curse. We had to dispose of the secretary, I'm afraid-"

"Naturally," Dumbledore muttered, after he sipped his tea. "A simple utter of '_Obliviate_' wouldn't suffice, of course."

"-Combine this," Snape went on, "on our side, with our own replacement for Consenate Pius Clarkson in BOMUSA, you'll be hard-pressed to stop the wheels of revolution from turning. It is, I believe, the Dark Lord's most brilliant attempt at subterfuge, his finest hour. Only _The Herald_ has managed to catch wind of it, a newspaper left with a just a semblance of its original voice since it moved up into high society. And as we've seen, this stratum of society has proved itself most fearful of the Dark Lord. Case in point: the Malfoys."

"Yes, the Malfoys…" Dumbledore said quietly to himself. "Draco, the poor boy. Is his mother still away?"

"I think so. I have not been to the manor as my schedule would not permit, though the Dark Lord will make it a point to step by this Wednesday. But I believe she's still at large. Where, I do not know. But it was a foolish whim." Snape spat the words with a bitter harshness. "Best she stays where she is, for the when the Dark Lords finds her missing on Wednesday I doubt he'll be pleased."

"So you don't know how Harry might be doing?" Dumbledore asked. Snape didn't deign to respond. "I'll have to summon Dobby again."

He sipped his tea. Snape watched him as he did, and his next words seemed to be of an urge he had tried to quell since, perhaps, as early as the beginning of the conversation.

"Whatever are you working on in this place, Dumbledore?" Snape demanded.

Dumbledore's eyes sharpened at Snape. He swallowed and put the mug down.

"It's so ghastly hot and dusty here the frequent splashes of bright colours seem something of a gesture of defiance against the elements."

Snape stared at the brown-skinned man sitting on the corner of the bed. "You haven't answered the question. So you've squatted in here and frequented the local tavern, is that it?"

"I wouldn't insult the owners of this cottage, they've been very kind to let me rent it," Dumbledore said solemnly. "And those taverns have proved very useful, if harmlessly fun indeed. Otherwise how, for instance, would have picked up the _Merlin Sun _and discovered that MAV tests were being rolled out across Britain while you were occupied with Voldemort's plans and unavailable to inform me? How would I have acted against that?"

Snape didn't speak, but his body had tensed as he was gripped by a need to know. "How have you acted?"

"I'll say I would rather not keep all my eggs in one basket," Dumbledore replied kindly. "I would also like to make the observation that the _Merlin Sun _is rather less myopic and, say, has a stronger spine that any of its counterparts in the Western media, even by _The Herald Independent_'s standards; they would be stunned out their Barmees themselves that such, in their eyes, backward people would outdo them so."

Snape gave a cynical-sounding sort.

"So you've started thinking like them, have you?"

"It's part of the disguise, Severus," Dumbledore said, giving a small smile, but hardly a warm one.

"I still maintain that this is rather all uninspiring," Snape said. "I—I don't know what I was expecting…"

Dumbledore looked at the man in front of him for almost a full minute.

"There are many who are waiting for me to conjure a miracle, Severus," Dumbledore said kindly, smiling, "to somehow push the frontier of the dark side out of our court and even into theirs with just a wand and a bird. But I did not think I would have to count you among them." Dumbledore's voice grew colder. "You, who have seen my workings, how I operate. I'm no magician, Severus, and I am not Merlin, boast to have an award in his name though I may. I have my limits like any other mortal man. You of all people know this."

Snape pulled himself out of his seeming guilt and looked around the room. "Speaking of your little pet bird, where is it?"

Dumbledore's eye twinkled. "Somewhere."

But the familiar gesture did not seem to have the same effect on Snape as it would have a teenager starving for a father-figure. Snape looked away from Dumbledore's eyes at the flimsy pillow on which he rested at night. His eyes took in the room once more and finally resumed their gaze on the face of man in front of him, whose face was flickering almost wraith-like ever-so-slightly in the candlelight, the turban on top of his head recalling certain memories of Harry's first year at Hogwarts. But the brown eyes staring back at him seemed to scorch him, for he very swiftly stared at a spot behind the other man.

"Severus, I would not think it of you. But you have never been able to keep your thoughts from me," Dumbledore said, slowly and benignly, holding his cup on his lap. "I confess myself a tad bit more skilled in that area than Voldemort."

Snape tightened his gaze at the spot behind Dumbledore.

"If you were to, then I would say I don't know anything, Severus. It would strip me of everything I know, and that – forgive me the immodesty – is a considerable amount. I will not believe that you are considering what you are considering in this moment."

"Again, the picture is rather uninspiring, Headmaster," Snape said quickly, as if to defend himself.

"That may be, but appearances aren't everything. Again, you of all people would know that. You still love Harry, Severus, do you not?"

_POP!_

"Dobby can't be doing this anymore, Professor Dumbledore!" said a sudden, wailing voice.

Snape and Dumbledore fixed their eyes on the elf that had just appeared in the middle of the room.

"Dobby can't be doing this anymore… Harry Potter is suffering too much… Dobby is not wanting to listen to Dumbledore… Dobby must be doing something…!"

Dumbledore stood up and placed his cup on his table. "Dobby, I need you to calm down. You've come a tad earlier than I anticipated. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"ENOUGH!" Snape exploded. It seemed the offer of tea to the elf had set him off rather Dobby's statement that Harry was under duress at the manor. Mid-wail Dobby squealed and scuttled to cower behind Dumbledore's leg. Temple pulsing fit to burst, Snape breathed heavily like some beast in front of them. "You say Potter is suffering, elf?" Snape asked the elf menacingly.

But all that could be heard from behind Dumbledore's pants were sniffles.

Snape turned his glare on Dumbledore. "That's enough, Albus. That's enough. We stand here while Voldemort is poised to take over the Wizarding world, and perhaps even the Muggle world, for himself! And yet you… you… cower here in this… abomination of a dwelling?"

"You've lost your way, Severus," Dumbledore said, in a soft, angry whisper. At once Dobby's sniffles stopped, and the air in the small room, despite India's hot weather, felt to have dropped more than a few degrees. Snape too seemed to have been given incentive to pause. "I am not cowering! You've seen the strategy before, yes!"

"Strategy?" Snape bellowed, sloughing all timidity once more, eyes bulging. "You call this a strategy?" He waved indicatively at the room around them.

Dumbledore stared at the man in front of him. He took a step forward, and again his eyes seemed to scorch Snape enough to make him look away from them. And again, Dumbledore seemed to emanate a certain indefinable power.

"I beg you, Severus," Dumbledore said quietly, in a voice unlike any which he had ever used before, one whose words were of such desperation they simply could have issued from such a great man. "Do not abandon me. You are all I have left."

"You mean all you have left to spy on Voldemort!" Snape shouted, spit flying out his mouth. His lips had gone dry and white and his hands had fisted, almost ready for a physical fight. "Make it the only thing you had to spy on Voldemort!"

"Severus!" Dumbledore shouted, and the candlelight flickered out. When Dumbledore waved his hand and relit the candle, Snape was gone.

Dumbledore fell onto the mattresses behind him, staring at the air so recently occupied by Snape. Dobby squeezed himself out from behind his legs, tottered, and then gazed still teary-eyed up at him.

"Professor Dumbledore, is Professor Snape coming back?" he asked, in a small squeak. "But what is Dumbledore saying Professor Snape will do?" Dobby's lips wobbled, and a glistening yellow drop of snot poked from under a long nostril. "But what is Dumbledore saying Dobby must do for Harry Potter?"

Dumbledore stared at the innocent elf crying at his feet. He laid his hands in his lap.

"I do not know, Dobby. I do not know anything."


End file.
